- Conference
- Date
- June 16, 2017
- Decision
Conference notes recent TUC research which found that one in ten UK workers, 3.2 million people, work in casual, agency, zero hour contracts or low paid self employment. They, and many more, face job insecurity, in-work poverty and workplace exploitation. This mushrooming shadow economy not only erodes the bargaining power of ordinary workers and degrades people’s expectations of their treatment within the workplace, it has long term implications for the political, economic and social health of the entire country.
Conference notes that the TUC research found that:
- 5 million people are now at risk of missing out on family-friendly rights including rights to maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental leave (including the right return to their job after the time off) and the right to request to work flexibly, an increase of 700,000 compared to a decade ago;
- In addition, there are 1.7 million self-employed people who lack access to these rights, and whose low pay means they cannot afford to protect themselves against the risk this creates;
- 5 million may have no right to an itemised pay slip, making it more difficult to receive the correct pay, an increase of 700,000 compared to a decade ago. These 1.5 million may also be missing out on protection from unfair dismissal;
- Nearly 500,000 people on a zero-hours contract or in insecure temporary work do not qualify for Statutory Sick Pay because they earn less than £112 a week, nearly a third of all those in this category;
- These workers are also excluded from full maternity pay and have no right to paternity pay;
- There is also no right for these workers to be automatically enrolled into a workplace pension.
Conference believes that precarious work exacerbates the imbalances of power which is already a feature of workplaces in the UK. Employers are able to define ‘flexibility’ to their advantage at the cost of an employee’s ability to say no to bad pay and detrimental conditions as well as holding a potent weapon against any challenge in the form of withholding work. There is a general and justified fear amongst agency and zero hours contract workers that if they do not accept work pattern changes that they will get minimal or no hours allocated the following week or month. In the same way they feel they themselves cannot even request changes to schedules for fear of a later drop in hours and hence income. Conference believes that the nature of such work and the wage patterns it produces contributes to the growing inequality in this country.
The experience of working within such exploitative terms and conditions of service can fundamentally reshape people’s experiences of work, lowering expectations and increasing tolerance of bad treatment. Low pay and insecure employment can also lead to debt, increasing the likelihood that once workers become even more vulnerable to low paid, insecure work and less able to challenge bad practices in the workplace, particularly poor health and safety. This has been compounded by the introduction of employment tribunal fees has further removed the ability of workers to tackle bad employers and access workplace justice. Fees have significantly reduced the likelihood of employers facing individual enforcement action. Since the introduction of fees in 2013 in Great Britain there has been a 70 per cent drop in tribunal claims.
Conference believes that the Government’s approach to the problem of widespread non-compliance with the NMW in the care sector is not fit for purpose. The National Audit Office has reported that up to 220,000 homecare workers in England are illegally paid below the National Minimum Wage. An investigation by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) of care providers between 2011 and 2013 found that 50% were guilty of non-compliance with the National Minimum Wage. The Resolution Foundation has calculated that care workers are collectively cheated of £130m a year due to sub minimum pay. Yet since the commencement of naming and shaming of employers by the Department for Business Innovation and Skill in 2014 only 36 separate social care providers have been exposed. Arrears of £86,075 have been identified for a total of just 646 workers. The Government still primarily relies upon care workers ringing the HMRC’s Pay and Rights Helpline before they will investigate care providers for non-compliance. However, many care workers are fearful of reporting their employer in case it jeopardises their employment, as a large proportion are now employed on zero hours contracts. The use of confusing and impenetrable pay slips by care employers is used to help mask non-compliance with the minimum wage and prevents care workers from receiving the pay that they are entitled to. Faced with growing pressure from UNISON to comply with minimum wage laws many care companies are now claiming they cannot afford to pay their workers legally. Conference condemns the actions of these care providers who have exploited their workforce for years.
Conference also notes that the entrenchment of women workers in insecure, low paid, part time work is often treated as a normal feature of the labour market rather than as a continuing injustice. Almost half of UNISON’s one million women members work part time. Some occupations like hospital domestics and school meals workers, are nearly all part time and are almost exclusively posts occupied by women – four times as many women than men work part time. Whilst part time work is often the only option for women seeking to balance homecare and childcare commitments with an income, there is, quite literally, a price to be paid, as the gender pay gap for women part time workers is significantly wider than that for full time women workers (as compared to full time men). There is a clear necessity for more quality part time working options. Conference believes that part time workers must have a right to equal pay for work of equal value; equal rights to bonus and other pay enhancements; equal access to fair pensions; and equal access to quality training and promotion.
Conference welcomes the new Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA) and its extended remit for tackling exploitation across the labour market. However, Conference is deeply concerned about a lack of new resources for an expanded remit. The current activities of the existing enforcement agencies are already stretched and there is no indication of additional funding being made available for the new enforcement framework and activities. If additional funding is not made available then resources will be diverted from existing compliance and enforcement work.
Conference believes that action to tackle the growth of insecure and low paid work cannot rely on individual workers in the most precarious of circumstances raising complaints about their employers. They do so risking their livelihoods and their family’s future and for migrant workers, at the threat of deportation.
Conference calls for strong enforcement action, greater coverage of employment rights for all workers and most crucially, strengthened collective bargaining across the labour market. This includes:
- Reforming employment status laws and rules to ensure that all workers benefit from the same basic floor of rights at work;
- Measures to ensure that workers in low paid jobs do not lose out on key safeguards when they are unable to work, due to sickness, maternity and paternity leave or in retirement;
- Increasing minimum wage enforcement by HMRC;
- Increasing access to workplace justice by scrapping employment tribunal fees in Great Britain;
- Giving trade unions the right to make formal complaints and trigger minimum wage investigations without naming individual workers;
- Proper resourcing and funding for the new GLAA;
- Improving health workplace health and safety inspections;
- Regulating not just abuses of zero hours or short hours contracts but also measures to ensure that all who want them get a regular hours contract;
- Strengthen workplace level bargaining and campaigning to tackle discrimination and workplace injustice;
- Promote greater collective bargaining coverage across the labour market;
- Meaningful and transparent pay slips for workers in the care sector;
- Increased resources for health and safety.
Conference therefore calls upon the National Executive Council to:
- Work with the TUC, STUC, WTUC and ICTU to campaign for a framework of measures to promote collective bargaining, union recognition, clear consultation rights and trade union organising;
- Negotiate for public authorities to take responsibility for their procurement practises and to have decent standards for in-house teams and contracted staff;
- Influence the Westminster Government, devolved administrations and other workplace regulators to promote effective action and resources for enforcement to tackle labour market exploitation;
- Campaign at national, regional and local level to ensure that workers rights are not weakened or undermined when the UK leaves the European Union;
- Continue to work with the Institute of Employment Rights, the Campaign for Trade Union Freedom and promote the Manifesto for Labour Law;
- Continue to campaign greater levels of compliance with the minimum wage in the care sector, including a push for more transparent pay slips;
- Campaign to ensure that care providers are not allowed to use the funding problems in the social care system as an excuse for continuing to exploit our members and the wider workforce through continued non-compliance with the minimum wage.
National Executive Council
53.1
Insert new sixth paragraph after “…exploited their workforce for years.”:
“Conference notes with concern that some care providers, who are commissioned by public authorities, are hostile to trade unions, and that this can present a barrier in our efforts to support care workers in pursuing even their legal minimum rights at work.”
In point ii) after “…in-house teams and contacted staff.” add the following:
“This should include pursuing commitments from public authorities to:
- A) Better employment and service standards from the organisations they commission services from through, for example, adopting UNISON’s ground-breaking Ethical Care Charter;
- B) Explore and utilise their new freedoms resulting from the UK leaving the EU so as to favour local, ethical and/or public sector organisations in procurement decisions.”
Sefton Local Government
NEC POLICY: SUPPORT
53.2
Add new point iii):
“iii) Work with the international committee on ways to promote ethical procurement practices across all of public services to ensure that no abuses take place in the global supply chains of public bodies and private companies delivering public services;”
Renumbered accordingly.
United Utilities
NEC POLICY: SUPPORT