Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Baroness Coffey

Tuesday 10th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is getting late—it is more than an hour and a half past my preferred bedtime—so I am going to show incredible restraint: although I have signed five amendments, I will speak to only three. I see that the Chief Whip is scowling at me even before I have started, so obviously I am going to milk it for all it is worth.

As a Green, I see that, with every decade of globalisation, this country has had less industry and more of our public services sold off to foreign owners. I do not understand why that has happened; it does not seem to be good business. The next step, of course, will be freeports, where basic rules and protections just disappear. That is where this country is heading. We need the return of strong trade unions to help turn the tide. Each of these amendments aims to give back the power that organised labour once had.

Amendment 239 would enable workers to act collectively if the employer has dismissed someone for downing tools. That person might have refused to work for all sorts of reasons: they might have been asked to do something dangerous, been asked in an abusive way or been asked to do something beyond their job description.

The Chief Whip is making me laugh now.

There are a lot of good reasons why somebody might walk out, and their colleagues can judge whether they are sensible.

The noble Lord, Lord Hendy, said he only really wanted to talk about Amendment 240. I agree that it is quite important because modern industry and services are broken up into small, interconnected companies and subcontractors, and it is essential that workers are able to bring their grievances to the attention of other workers in closely related workplaces. Employers do not like it because it is working people acting in solidarity with each other. It is one set of workers asking another set of employees to make their own decisions about which side they are on.

The idea of democracy does not stop at the ballot box, not that we would know much about that; it should be in the workplace as well. Last week, I met a trade unionist from Italy. He and his coworkers took over the GKN factory in Florence. They are trying to move as a co-operative working force from making parts for very expensive cars to making eco-bikes and solar panels. It is a fantastic opportunity, and I really hope they are successful.

Amendment 241 is the most crucial of these amendments as it restores the right of workers to take industrial action to be recognised as trade unionists. This is the most basic of rights, and it is shameful that a Labour Government have not put this into the Bill. What is Labour for if it is not about working people? Everything else, apparently.

The decline in trade unions has led to the growth of the gig economy and spurious self-employment. The age of secure employment and regular hours has become a fading dream for far too many. This amendment is another small step towards giving people some power in their workplace. Collective bargaining should be automatic in workplaces if a large enough group of employees want it. With so many employers unwilling to take that step, it is crucial that those employees have the right to strike and demand that recognition from an employer.

I would like a just and fair society. The richest 50 families in the UK hold more wealth than the bottom 33.5 million people. How is that okay? I argue that it is not. Nothing in this country works properly any more because the gap between the richest and the poorest is increasing every single day. Those on a low income are being left behind and those on middle incomes are being fleeced by privatised services. Strong trade unions are one way of helping people find a bit of power and control in their lives—these amendments enable that.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, for bringing this into our debate but, candidly, his Amendment 240 is truly extraordinary. The only success Flying Pickets had was a number one in 1983 with the single “Only You”—and, by the way, that was a copy from the great band Yazoo. The idea that we would go back to flying pickets is just extraordinary.

Some 45 years on, no sensible Labour Peer has put this forward until tonight. I genuinely find it astonishing that we are here still debating the idea that it is democracy for a strike to be called somewhere else all of a sudden and for you to go off somewhere else for a dispute you are not part of.

While I appreciate the erudite speech we have heard tonight, going back to the real substance and principle of this, this is an important Bill. I do not agree with a lot of it, but I find it extraordinary that we are going back in time when this country actually needs to move forward in modern industrial relations. I regret the amendments that have been tabled today.

Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Baroness Coffey

Committee stage
Tuesday 3rd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I rise to move Amendment 141 in the name of my noble friend Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. She is, about now, talking about net zero to students at Oxford University. It was an engagement that was made some time ago, but she wishes to express her thanks to the Minister for arranging a meeting to discuss this and later amendments, and for the constructive dialogue that followed.

This amendment speaks for itself, but I would like to describe a case where it would have been applicable. It is that of 19 year-old Ellen Reynolds, from Glasgow, who worked a five-hour shift in a restaurant. She told the BBC:

“I ran food and drinks to customers … I cleaned the tables, set up the tables, swept the floor, took people to their seats … took a few payments on the card machine”.


Before that shift, she had to buy a shirt and trousers as a uniform, costing £20. Then, she got paid nothing, and she did not get a job out of it.

The Department for Business and Trade’s guidance on national minimum wage eligibility includes a section on unpaid work trial periods, which discusses to what extent the national minimum wage applies to work trials undertaken as part of a recruitment process. It says that work trials can help employers to

“decide whether the individual has the skills and qualities … for the job”,

and that unpaid work trials can be a

“legitimate practice”,

so long as they are not used

“to obtain work or services for which at least the minimum wage should be paid”.

That, I believe, is an invitation to abuse: the kind of abuse that Ellen suffered, being expected to work for nothing—not getting less than the minimum wage, but getting nothing at all. We hear reports of employers who do this to a succession of workers.

For those who would like to explore this issue in more depth than I have time for today, I point them to a debate in Westminster Hall on 29 March 2023, secured by Stewart Malcolm McDonald MP. That followed the introduction by the same MP of a Private Member’s Bill in 2017 seeking to achieve the same outcome as this amendment. That Bill that won the backing of the Scottish Trades Union Congress and the National Union of Students, among others. The commendably persistent MP reintroduced it last year. So, it has been an issue that has been around a long time but still has no solution.

If the Minister feels that the amendment is not properly drafted, I have been assured by my noble friend that she is in no way attached to the detail of how it is written, although she thanks the Bill Office for its assistance so far. The point is to act and to actually create a solution for an abuse that is enacted on people who can least afford it.

I have heard some very familiar phrases in the past few groups: we need more information, this is not the right time, there is legislation elsewhere that deals with this and this is not the Bill. But if not now, in the Employment Rights Bill, then when and how? We have to protect workers such as Ellen. They are often young and vulnerable, and sometimes English is not their first language. Surely the point of an Employment Rights Bill is to protect people from exploitation such as unpaid work.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I am sympathetic to the intentions behind this amendment. There are risks of exploitation, which the noble Baroness has just set out. Where I am somewhat more concerned and have more sympathy with the amendment debated earlier today is about how people continue to do these sorts of jobs and still do not get paid.

To give a real example, the Department for Work and Pensions runs a programme called SWAP. It is quite a short-term programme and it is not quite the same as a boot camp, principally run by the DfE. It is often for people perhaps wanting to go into a new sector or who are open to new experiences, so there is an element of training. However, a key part of the SWAP is that you work and try out. There is no guarantee that, at the end of that, you will get a job with that specific employer, but what really matters is that it will give you a sense of aptitude and of getting back into the workplace, while you continue to receive benefits.

Let us not pretend that receiving universal credit for a week is necessarily the same as being paid the equivalent of a national minimum wage. But my principal concern with this amendment is that, while wanting to avoid exploitation, it would unwittingly or unknowingly shut down these broader opportunities and programmes which the Government run to help get people back into the world of work. That is why it needs to be considered carefully by the Minister, but ultimately rejected.