The warnings and predictions just keep on coming. Following the World Bank statement earlier this year that the rise in Global Inequality is partly due to the decline of trade unions, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has released its own warnings about accelerating global inequality. The report notes that the Global Labour Market and the nature of employment is changing significantly.
Only 25% of workers currently have a stable, long term employment relationship with their employer. The other 75% (60% of whom do not have a contract) are exist in zero hours, self employed, part time, temporary or even intern contracts. Even in the so-called stable economies of Europe and North America over 33% of workers work in `precarious work` employment.
http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS_368252/lang--en/index.htm
On Monday Labour launches its 2015 General Election manifesto but the 'work manifesto' A Better Plan for Britain’s Workplaces published on 1st April, provides an early insight into the party's proposals for employment rights. Strong commitments include an apprenticeship guarantee, outlawing the use of agency workers to undercut permanent employees (but not removing the 12 week qualifying period for equal rights), banning 'exploitative' zero hours contracts and raising the national minimum wage hourly rate to £8 within the next five years.
http://b.3cdn.net/labouruk/0d7eac1a5ecd182f46_e8m6ivtck.pdf
CLASS, the labour movement think tank, has published the first in a series of general election guides. Election 2015:
What’s at stake for work, pay and unions?
This timely publication provides excellent ammunition for organisers and stewards to explain the unfair realities of work in Britain today and why enhanced collective bargaining is the key to reversing years of rising inequality. As TUC General Secretary Frances O'Grady says in her foreword: '2015 must be the year when we ensure the recovery, share its proceeds fairly and start to undo the damage done to our public services and welfare state by the crash and its aftermath. Strong unions, fair pay settlements and decent jobs with full employment rights are at the heart of how we achieve this'
http://classonline.org.uk/docs/election15_-_work,_pay,_unions_single.pdf
Yesterday Italian unions staged a General Strike in protest at the Jobs Act which seeks to deregulate employment rights by weakening national bargaining and removing protections against unfair dismissal.
CGIL leader Susanna Camusso addressing a strike rally in Turin said: 'The government has to change its policies on employment. The Jobs Act and the budget do nothing to revive the economy and create jobs'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30447158
In their biggest protest for a decade, up to one million Italian trade unionists mobilised in Rome yesterday in opposition to attacks on employment rights by the Democratic Party led Italian Government. Susanna Camusso, head of the CGIL, the trade union centre which organised the protest, said: "We want work for everyone, and work with rights. This is a demonstration for those without work, without rights, those who suffer, who have no certainties for the future. We are here and we're not going away. We will strike and use all our strength to fight to change this Government's policies."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-29771540
A new report from the TUC - What Price Justice? - shows how since the introduction of fees in July 2013 there has been a 79 per cent fall in overall claims taken to employment tribunals, with women and low-paid workers the worst affected. One year on, the worst fears of trade unions are being realised and workplace rights are being priced out of existence. In business and Tory Party circles much is said about 'regulatory barriers' yet they have hypocritically introduced a fees regime to block enforcement of legal rights for workers. All in support of their preferred 'hire and fire' flexible labour market:
http://www.tuc.org.uk/sites/default/files/TUC_Report_At_what_price_justice.pdf
'In this country, we don’t walk on by when people are sick when people lose work when people get old'' claimed David Cameron in his speech on Scottish independence yesterday. The hypocrisy of the aloof and smug millionaire was laid bare on the same day when the High Court rejected UNISON’s challenge to the Government’s decision to introduce employment tribunal and employment appeal tribunal fees. Yes Prime Minister, it's true you don't walk on when workers lose jobs. You put your jackboot on their throat instead:
http://www.unison.org.uk/news/unison-appeal-disappointing-judicial-review-decision-on-tribunal-fees
Legislation amending the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (TUPE 2006) was laid before Parliament on Friday. As expected the proposed changes, which will take effect on 31 Januury 2014, will weaken employment protection when services are outsourced.
Today marks the repeal of provisions in the Equality Act 2010 for employment protection against third-party harassment and xpertHR lists eight key cases from its short existence. They highlight the limitations and strengths of the now scrapped law including an EAT decision which held that ‘an employer “subjected” its employees to unlawful race discrimination when it allowed comedian Bernard Manning and guests at an event to abuse and harass them racially, in circumstances in which it had sufficient control over the discriminatory event so as to have been able to prevent or reduce the extent of it by applying good employment practice’
http://www.xperthr.co.uk/blogs/employment-tribunal-watch/2013/09/third-party-harassment-claims-against-employers-eight-key-cases/
In recent weeks it has been good to see UNISON at the forefront of the campaign against zero hours contracts. As Dave Prentis
said in the Guardian ‘the vast majority of workers are only on these contracts because they have no choice. They may give flexibility to a few, but the balance of power favours the employers and makes it hard for workers to complain.’ The key question is what is to be done by unions about this insidious problem which is now prevalent across the public as well as the private sector? On the
IER blog Keith Ewing sets out practical measures for a new legal framework to end the abuse of zero hours contracts. While we wait for a worker friendly Government to amend the Working Time Regulations, Keith’s proposals make an excellent negotiating brief for union branches to challenge any employer who denies workers guaranteed working hours and pay.
In the original version of his controversial speech yesterday the Labour shadow Immigration Minister Chris Bryant criticised Next PLC for hiring hundreds of Polish seasonal workers ‘to avoid Agency Workers Regulations which apply after a candidate has been employed for over 12 weeks’. The fact that agency workers are vulnerable to exploitation has nothing whatsoever to do with nationality (as a Next spokesperson was quick to point out) but everything to do with the shameful and unnecessary concession granted to employers by the TUC and Labour Government when adopting the EU Agency Workers directive in 2010.
Not before time zero hours contracts have come under public scrutiny. A blatant device for employers limiting their own contractual liabilities as well as denying rights to their employees, these 'contracts' have not only proliferated in marketised areas of public services such as home care but also in core areas like NHS staff banks which do not guarantee work to registered staff. An editorial in The Occupied Times locates ‘permanently precarious’ employment in the context of 30 years of neo liberalism which has led to a 'fundamental shift in the nature of work':
http://theoccupiedtimes.org/?p=11613
After the Government’s abandonment of minimum drinks prices and restrictions on tobacco advertising following effective lobbying by cash rich industry lobbies, today we have Local Government Minister Eric Pickles responding like Pavlov’s Dog to RAC Foundation criticism of local authorities for enforcing their own democratically agreed parking regulations and services: "This profit shows why we need to review and rein in unfair town hall parking rules. Councils aren't listening, and local shops and hard-working families are suffering as a result. The law is clear that parking is not a tax or cash cow for town hall officers." In a week when his Government has introduced ET fees which will rake them in tens of millions from low paid workers, this is rank hypocrisy from Pickles:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/08/01/parking-fines-surplus_n_3686334.html?1375338658&utm_hp_ref=uk
#cpc12 Tory Chancellor George Osborne's proposal that workers exchange their rights of unfair dismissal and redundancy for tax free company shares marks a new low in the debasement of employment rights in the UK. But it is likely to be an attractive option for many private sector employers keen to establish a 'flexible' and subordinate workforce. This proposal for a modern form of indentured servitude should be roundly condemned and resisted by the labour movement including the Labour Party:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/oct/08/osbornes-shares-rights-scheme-unions
Despite talk of it being watered down following a universally negative reaction to the Beecroft 'fire at will' proposals, the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, which is making its way through Parliament, contains important changes which will undermine worker protections and rights. These include the use of so called settlement agreements rather than employment tribunals to resolve disputes, the introduction of a rapid resolution scheme for some workplace disputes, a reduction in workplace inspections and enabling powers to enable the repeal of regulations:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/2012-2013/0007/cbill_2012-20130007_en_3.htm
A TUC report analyses the potentially devastating impact of the recently published ConDem commissioned report on workers employed in companies with fewer than 10 staff. Brendan Barber TUC General Secretary said: 'already people have to wait two years before getting protection against unfair dismissal. The opponents of workplace decency, like Adrian Beecroft, are using the economic crisis as an excuse to try to smuggle through attacks on employee rights:'
http://www.tuc.org.uk/equality/tuc-21079-f0.cfm
Professor Keith Ewing, writing in today’s Morning Star, reminds us that the Con Dem Government has already savagely attacked workers rights with last month’s introduction of a 2 year qualifying period for protection against unfair dismissal and the imposition of Employment Tribunal fees. But Keith warns that the Beecroft report goes much further in its aim of a lawless, hire and fire economy, where ‘workers could be sacked for any reason or no reason’:
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/119362
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