Covid-19: Employment Rights

Andy McDonald Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Christopher. I congratulate the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) and the Backbench Business Committee on securing this important debate. I declare my interest as a proud member of Unite the union.

In March the Prime Minister told people across the country that the Government would put their arms around every single worker, but what has taken place in the past eight months has been nowhere close to what he promised. Instead we have had the silent erosion of employment rights and protections without a whisper from the Government. There is no doubt that this crisis has been brutal for working people, who have been laid off and made redundant in their droves and who have seen huge falls in the wages that they take home at the end of the day. It has been a brutal awakening that the rights and protections that they are supposed to enjoy, rather than acting as bulwarks against abuse by their employers, are in reality worth little more than the paper they are written on.

One of the most fundamental workers’ rights is the right to a safe workplace, as set out in numerous pieces of legislation, and the importance of that right could not be more pronounced during this pandemic, where otherwise benign workplaces such as retail have been turned into high-risk places, with high rates of contact with members of the public putting staff at risk from coronavirus. Despite that, huge numbers of workers were told to return to work over the summer, their employers spurred on by the dwindling support and increasing limitations of the furlough scheme, without proper precautions to ensure that a safe workplace was being put in place—effectively rolling back the right to a safe workplace.

The ability to demand this return to work, and the failure to put proper protections in place, putting staff in great danger—as we have seen in the health and social care sector—are a direct result of gutting local authority resources and in particular the Health and Safety Executive, which has been left powerless to enforce the rules that it was formed to uphold, with almost £150 million in real-terms cuts between 2010 and 2018 and about 500 inspectors let go. As we have seen at British Airways and Centrica, or British Gas, unscrupulous employers have been using this crisis—as my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) said—as cover to unilaterally push through dramatic changes to employment contracts and to water down staff pay, terms and conditions. These unfair, unethical and underhand fire and rehire tactics, used by some of the largest and most profitable businesses, are essentially a legal loophole for blackmail that leaves workers worse off, as employers know full well that, in an increasingly uncertain employment market and under the threat of redundancy, workers cannot say no.

Such tactics also allow bad employers, who are happy to chop away at rights and pay or to let staff take the fall for poor business decisions and mistakes while sitting on vast financial reserves and still paying bonuses and dividends to flourish, while good employers, who care about and invest in their staff, are punished as a consequence. These are the last things that people in our economy need in the middle of a recession. The Government should be helping businesses to boost wages, improve productivity and invest in their work force, not to shed staff and cut wages and employment rights. While they are at it, they could end the scourge of zero-hours contracts and insecure work.

Just look at Optare in North Yorkshire, where a last-minute concession was drawn from the Government to ensure that workers had the right to picket, as my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley) said. Look at Ark Academy school trust, whose cleaning contractor, Ridge Crest, told the reps from United Voices of the World to drop their union and they would get PPE and the London living wage. Look at the Leicester garment workers, knocking out fashion for Boohoo at record speed, having their pay withheld and otherwise being paid half the national minimum wage. Where is the enforcement from the Government?

Then there are workers whose rights have been breached and who have been put at risk by their employer over this period, but who actually know the rights and protections that the law affords them. They still have to overcome the hurdles that are put in place by an enormous backlog in the employment tribunal system. The figures have soared to over 450,000—an increase of almost 50%. Even if a worker has been forced to return to work in an unsafe environment, has had their wages and conditions cut or has been unfairly dismissed, they are not likely to get justice for the best part of two years, if not longer.

Justice for such basic matters that takes two years to be served is not justice. Rights that cannot be enforced are not rights at all; they are just gestures of good will that employers can readily ignore on a whim. Vital and fundamental employment rights that were built over years of what were extraordinary struggles, often in the face of huge adversity, have been demoted to little more than platitudes, rather than real, meaningful and enforceable rules and protections.

While this takes place, the Government look on. Although they have set out guidance for workplaces to be made covid-secure, they have failed to make it clear that the guidance does not circumvent or replace the statutory protections that are currently in place, thereby reminding employers of their legal obligations towards the health and wellbeing of their staff, even within the offices of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

The Government have refused to back the Health and Safety Executive and to give it the teeth it needs to hold bad employers to account for their unsafe workplaces, putting staff in danger from covid by returning only a measly £14 million out of what has been a £150 million cut since the last Labour Government. It is simply illogical that the Government brought in new powers to restrain citizens from putting others at risk in the public sphere, while at the same time neglecting the enforcement of workplace protections, thereby allowing employers to flout the law in the workplaces they control and to put at risk the health and safety of workers and, in turn, the wider public.

In discharging his duty to keep safe all who work in this place, the conduct of the Leader of the House has been woeful and reckless in the extreme. On the outrageous tactic of firing and rehiring, the Government’s record is no better. They tell us that they expect all employers to treat their employees fairly and to follow the rules, and they have made it clear that they regret some of the decisions that have been taken. The Prime Minister had the audacity to tell BA staff in an email that employers should not be removing staff or changing terms and conditions, yet the Government have still allowed employers such as BA to take the taxpayer’s money and to lay off huge numbers of staff without consequences. They have refused to commit to stand up against such exploitation by bad businesses and to legislate to ban this tactic for good, as the Leader of the Opposition has rightly called for them to do.

Such outright indifference to the struggle of workers to keep their jobs, wages, rights and conditions takes place against a backdrop of the Government undermining the strength and bargaining power of trade unions that are fighting to protect jobs. However, we should not expect anything less from the same Government who sought to curtail the ability of working people to do that, though imposing employment fees.

President-elect Joe Biden said in his campaign:

“Today, however, there’s a war on organising, collective bargaining, unions, and workers. It’s been raging for decades, and it’s getting worse with Donald Trump in the White House.”

That is exactly the position in the UK after 10 years of Tory rule. After a decade of brutal austerity cuts by the Government, they have undermined protection for people at work and increased the risk to their health, safety and welfare. However, the pandemic has exposed just how much damage austerity has done, and how far these rights have been eroded.

The excuses offered by the Minister will be that such concerns are commercial issues—he has said it before—and that they are to be resolved by employers and workers. That is not good enough, and it shows just how far removed from reality the Government have become. It also demonstrates just how inadequate and unenforceable our current employment rights and protections are, and why, more than ever, we need a new employment rights settlement that can properly protect working people across the country.

I urge the Minister to confirm that the Government will never again put obstacles in the way of working people upholding their rights and seeking redress, and to guarantee that the protections afforded to working people will be strengthened in the employment Bill that has yet to appear before Parliament, a year after being promised. Their boast was that the employment Bill would

“Protect and enhance workers’ rights as the UK leaves the EU, making Britain the best place in the world to work.”

Well, let’s see it.