Baroness Prosser
Main Page: Baroness Prosser (Labour - Life peer)Employment
Baroness Prosser Excerpts
Baroness Prosser
To call attention to the changing world of employment; and to move for papers.
Baroness Prosser
My Lords, I am privileged and pleased to be able to introduce this debate—
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, I suggest that we observe the usual courtesies of this House, which are that first we leave quietly and secondly that we do not walk in front of the person trying to speak.
Baroness Prosser
Whatever happened to the gentlemen?
I am privileged and pleased to be able to introduce this Labour debate on the changing world of employment. The subject is wide and encompasses issues to do with the economy, education, welfare and services as well, of course, as employment policy. My contribution will range across these areas, ending with some proposals for action.
Most noble Lords will recall the days when, educated or otherwise, qualified or not, a person could walk into a job at any time and, if they did not like it, they could walk out and into another one. The need for hands was very great. Factories employed people in their thousands. Rural areas employed miners in hundreds of communities and the supply chain of pit props, clothing, safety equipment et cetera kept the money going round in villages and towns throughout the land.
Opportunities did not, of course, abound for everyone. Very limited childcare facilities and opportunities for part-time work meant that most women had the choice of staying at home or finding jobs that could fit around their husband’s employment—evening and morning shifts, in the main. Flexibility of attendance was unheard of, and opportunities for people with disabilities were even more limited than they are today. Newcomers to the country faced hostility, and were herded into jobs that no one else wanted.
Then came the 1980s and the Thatcher Administration— the second industrial revolution, as it was called. Things which were going to change anyway suddenly changed very rapidly. Globalisation was making itself felt, and manufacturing took flight, commencing its round-the-world quest for the cheapest dollar. Mines closed in their hundreds, leaving communities bereft and groundless, and new technology took hold, introducing easier and faster methods of production than could be matched by the human hand.
I had some interesting conversations about that time with international trade union colleagues. One man at a metalworkers’ conference complained that a French company—which, by the way, had been a big employer in the United Kingdom—had left his country, Malaysia, and was now setting up in cheaper Vietnam. Ironic, I thought.
In the 30 years since this shift started we have seen a profound change in the labour market. After a sharp fall in the numbers employed in the 1980s, and apart from a blip downwards in around 1991-92, employment figures have risen steadily, with an extra 4 million people in employment between 1993 and 2008. Of course, during that time the structure of the labour market has changed.
According to figures contained in the excellent IPPR report, “Jobs for the future”, the agriculture and fishing sector is down by 27 per cent, manufacturing down by 31 per cent, and electricity and gas down by almost half. Increases came in real estate, up by a whopping 103 per cent, and information and communications, up by 59 per cent, with health and social work, education, arts, entertainment and recreation all also significantly higher. So there has been a major shift from blue collar manual work—or “full-time, proper jobs”, as some in the trade union movement used to rather patronisingly say—to jobs requiring different skills and certainly a more formally educated workforce. There are more jobs for women, too. Clearly, this major change in the nature of the workforce called for a shift in trade union activity and emphasis. My own union—the T&G, as was—supported by the TUC, ran a major campaign led by the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Handsworth, with the slogan “Full-time rights for part-time workers and permanent rights for temporary workers”. These aims have been achieved, although it has taken almost until now to settle the agency workers directive.
In a spirit of meanness, the Government of 1993 removed many low-paid and largely non-union workers from the protection of the wages boards. One woman member of the T&G executive council, who worked as a bartender in the north-east, did not get a pay rise until six years later, when Labour introduced the national minimum wage in 1999. Many workers in unorganised workplaces received paid holidays for the first time, via the introduction of the working time directive.
The right to request flexibility was introduced by the Labour Government, and despite the musings of some policy wonks—most of whom have never set foot in a workplace outside of Westminster—I believe it is recognised by most employers as both helpful and essential. Also courtesy of the previous Government, the real needs of working parents were recognised by fiscal initiatives which provided meaningful help towards childcare costs, making it economically viable to participate in the labour market.
The national minimum wage mentioned above was introduced amid an exaggerated furore of likely job losses. Four million jobs later, that was shown up for the myth that it was. Since then there has been the emphasis on education, and improving standards for all. I do not, of course, disagree with that intention. I do, however, question what I would describe as a bias towards academia at the expense of vocational training.
Not everyone is cut out for academic work; anyway, the country also needs people with practical skills. During this period, we have seen too many young people convinced that a university education is the only or best option and taking degree courses in subjects not remotely linked to the needs of the labour market.
All of this was very well while everything else in the garden was rosy. The shift from making things to a service-based economy goes back many years and the growth of the finance sector has its roots pre-1997. Very neatly, of course, the taxes paid by extremely well paid financial workers paid the bills for the growth of public services, which I must say were in need of investment following the funding blight of the 1980s, but now we come full circle. The banking bubble has burst and a new Administration rule the Westminster agenda. The financial situation is of course very difficult—it would be crass to pretend otherwise—but simply cutting away all the advances that have been made in the past 15 or so years does not fill me or, I suggest, the great British public with confidence.
The idea mooted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and repeated this week by Michael Gove, that reducing workers’ employment rights is going to boost jobs would be hilariously funny if it were not so tragic and frankly ridiculous. Taking away education maintenance allowances, collapsing the Future Jobs Fund, cancelling the right to work experience and increasing fees to attend university are taking this debate in completely the wrong direction. This week’s report by the IFS states that education spending is being slashed by 14 per cent, the largest cut since the 1950s. How mad is that? We need a strategy that recognises the global nature of the dilemma in which we find ourselves. PwC's recent report, The World in 2050, says in its summary:
“Rapid growth in consumer markets in the major emerging economies, associated with a fast-growing middle class, will provide great new opportunities for western companies that can establish themselves in these markets”.
It goes on to say that,
“Western companies will increasingly be playing in the slow lane of history if they continue to focus on markets in North America and Western Europe”.
According to this report, the UK currently sells around 7 per cent of its exports to the BRIC countries, about the same as we export to Ireland.
So what do we need to do? First, I suggest we need to get a long-term strategy which encompasses the recognition that we are a global player in a world which is fast overtaking us. Long-termism is not of course a familiar political concept, with most politicians operating on the maxim of jam today and heaven tomorrow. However, none of us will be thanked in the future if we do not work towards the United Kingdom taking a leading role in the world’s economic development.
Secondly, we need to invest as much as possible in the education and training of the population, with better support for school pupils making choices about their studies, opportunities for them to experience work and for employers to build relationships with schools. We need more money going into vocational training, including opportunities for young people to retrain or to take up apprenticeships at a more mature stage in their lives. Lots of youngsters do not do well at school; then, when they are 25 or 30, they realise that they could have done better. We waste talent and lose spending power by not giving second chances to such folk. Equally, we need second chances for women post having children. The Women and Work Commission report produced in 2006 estimated that increasing women’s participation in the labour market could be worth between £15 billion and £23 billion each year to the Exchequer.
Thirdly, we need to invest in research—not an area where we have in the past covered ourselves in glory. General manufacture in large volume is not likely to return to this country. Wages and general costs prohibit that—all the more reason, therefore, to invest in innovation and new ideas.
Fourthly, we need to wake up to the fact that society has changed. Expectations among groups which have long been left behind or marginalised have shifted over the years and remaining at the bottom of the heap will not be quietly tolerated for ever. Positive action programmes to help employers understand the value of diversity in the workplace would go a long way towards breaking down myths and barriers. We cannot afford to leave great swathes of the population on the unemployment shelf just because we are not used to coping with disability, for example, or difference. These are just a few ideas which are essential to aid the UK’s recovery and to launch us back into the global marketplace. Failure to act will not only see the UK limping along, looking like a second-class has-been, but exacerbate the already unacceptable wealth gap and lead to an unhappy and divided society.
There are, of course, a number of immediate initiatives which the Government should take to deal with the current high rate of unemployment. I am sure that other noble Lords will address some of these issues in their contributions.
Baroness Prosser
My Lords, I am extremely grateful to everyone who has contributed to the debate. It has been rich and wide-ranging, and we have covered all kinds of important issues within the world of work. Skills were mentioned by many noble Lords, as was the growth of technology, the use of social media, equalities and fairness, public and private employment and, of course, employment rights. Importantly, towards the end of the debate, my noble friend Lady Wheeler raised the role of management and the importance of management skills.
Part-way through the debate, a comment was made that the majority of contributors to this debate were people with a trade union background. That is correct, but I should like noble Lords and the House to recognise that as a positive, because the contributions made by those of us from a trade union background represent many years of collective knowledge and experience that we want to use in a debate such as this, not simply to be overtly critical or oppositionist, but to demonstrate that that experience tells us that some of the ideas currently being mooted within government quarters may have unintended consequences. We have been here before. We know just how difficult the world of work becomes when it is out of kilter, out of balance and unfair.
I very much thank the Minister for her reply. There was a great deal of positive comment in it. I again thank the whole House. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.