Fire and Rehire Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
Beth Winter
Main Page: Beth Winter (Labour - Cynon Valley)Department Debates - View all Beth Winter's debates with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
Fire and Rehire
Beth Winter Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab) [V]
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) for securing this incredibly important debate. Fire and rehire practices have become endemic during covid-19, including at Goodlord, Go North West, Jacobs Douwe Egberts, and British Gas, and I fear that they will only become more common as the furlough scheme comes to an end.
I have received much correspondence from constituents here in Cynon Valley detailing the distress and pain caused by these bullying tactics. I commend the trade unions, including my own union Unite, for the tireless work they are doing to expose these exploitative fire and rehire tactics, and I stand in solidarity with all workers who take industrial action to oppose them.
Fire and rehire has little to do with the pandemic. Covid-19 is being used as a smokescreen for unscrupulous businesses to do what they have long done—erode workers’ rights, slash pay, and keep wages and benefits low to increase value for shareholders. The Government’s complacency on the matter has been taken as a green light.
I am sympathetic to the unprecedented position in which UK businesses find themselves, but businesses using fire and rehire tactics are not doing so because of their economic situation. Using the impact of the covid-19 pandemic to attempt to drive down pay and benefits is not going to wash. It is unacceptable that a company such as Centrica plc—parent company of British Gas—which continues to report hundreds of millions in profit each year can even consider forcing unfavourable contracts on its staff. Sadly, that reflects what I believe is an entrenched attitude in boardrooms across the country: employees are not a vital resource to be invested in and supported, but rather an operational cost for those businesses that must be kept to the bare minimum. That is underpinned by a capitalist model that unfailingly puts shareholders ahead of the workers who create that wealth.
Fire and rehire places an immediate financial burden on workers, exposes them to more precarious relationships with employers and, in some cases, might even jeopardise retirement plans. For firms to choose such a path knowing the likely outcomes in the midst of a global pandemic is morally indefensible. That scandalous treatment of workers must be stopped. The Government must act now to introduce legislation to outlaw that practice, as other countries have already done. By failing to do so, the Government are once again choosing to support billionaire bosses over the ordinary working people of this country. Diolch yn fawr.