At Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs), Andy McDonald MP said on 15 January:
The employment rights bill is urgently needed especially given the exploitation of gig workers like those retail assistants employed throughout with vital rights denied and staff being charged a premium should they want to be paid on time.
Insecure work denies workers their rights but the TUC also says it costs the UK economy around £10bn a year. So will the prime minister agree with me that having a single status of worker will help end such abusive practices, give workers security and significantly benefit the economy?
UK high street retailers have been employing young assistants through gig acts that lack basic employment rights. Labour’s employment rights bill doesn’t include a single status of worker, which aims to guarantee rights across the economy.
Keir Starmer responded:
I believe everyone is entitled to fair, flexible and secure working. And that’s why we introduced our employment rights bill, which is the biggest upgrade to workers’ rights in a generation. It includes measures that will end the scandal of fire and rehire, preventing exploitative zero hour contracts and introducing basic rights for workers from day one.
Progress at PMQs, but a sub-standard starting point
The Labour Party’s move to strengthen workers’ rights is only significant because the benchmark is so low. That’s partly because of anti-trade union legislation that the Tories introduced including in 2016. A report from academics for the Trade Union Congress (TUC) found that the UK presently lags behind other developed OECD countries when it comes to workers’ rights.
The bill is a step forward in a shoddy context.
Professor Deakin, director of the Centre for Business Research at Cambridge University, said:
The UK is an international outlier when it comes to worker protections. Our labour laws are significantly less protective of workers’ rights than the average in the developed countries which make up the OECD.
The gap is particularly marked with respect to laws on working time, employee representation, and the right to strike.
The report shows that UK labor laws have been less protective of workers’ rights than other developed countries since Margaret Thatcher.
In 2010, the Tories, propped up by the Lib Dems, increased the period before workers are protected from unfair dismissal to two years of employment. Labour’s bill remedies the unfair practice altogether through introducing protections from unfair dismissal from the beginning of employment.
The bill also included piecemeal steps forward in the right to sick pay. Further, it will guarantee hours for those on zero hour contracts, if the employee wants them. The act will repeal the restrictive trade union ballot threshold for strike action that the Tories introduced in 2016.
In October, Zarah Sultana MP said in parliament:
We must go further and repeal every single anti-trade union bill since Thatcher
It seems Labour won’t be doing this – and so, everything else is piecemeal, as PMQs exposed.
Featured image via the House of Commons
