Unpaid Work Trials

Chris Stephens Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald), on securing the debate. I emphasise my support for his private Member’s Bill.

I am one of the Scottish National party signatories to that Bill, alongside my hon. Friends the Members for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson), for Glasgow East (David Linden), for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) and for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan). I also pay tribute to the hon. Members for East Lothian (Martin Whitfield) and for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) for their support. Indeed, the Bill is supported by Members from every single political party represented in the House. You look surprised, Mr Hollobone, but there are Conservative Members who support my hon. Friend’s Bill.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Order. As Chairman, I have neither a surprised face nor any other kind of face. Mine is a neutral face. I am just listening to the hon. Gentleman’s speech with great interest.

[Chris Stephens]

Thank you, Chair. All I will say is that I will play you at poker for money any time. We will move on.

The Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South is supported by the Scottish Trades Union Congress and the Trades Union Congress. As my hon. Friend outlined, he has been assisted by both “Better Than Zero” and Unite the Union’s hospitality section, and I thank Bryan Simpson, a constituent of my hon. Friend’s, for sending us an excellent briefing for the debate. It highlights several issues that hon. Members have addressed, including Mooboo, which I will come on to, and Aldi, which has had to change its practices.

The briefing also includes the testimony of individuals who have been through unpaid work trials. Rachel from Bearsden said:

“I did two unpaid trials of 5-6 hours each for a local restaurant who then strung me along for weeks with the promise of shifts before ending contact.”

Nicole from Renfrew said:

“I went to one of these and it is actually slave labour. They use you to get the shop ready for opening time and get annoyed if you make any mistakes (even though you haven’t been trained to do the job). They just abandon you and come back moaning that you’ve not finished the million tasks to do. They then emailed me the next day saying I was unsuccessful and that they can’t provide feedback because of the volume of applicants.”

Those are just some of the cases studies that Unite supplied.

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

We know that not only are such cases fairly common, but particular employers use a string of people like that, giving only short shifts or a day or two of employment. Those employers use people simply to plug a gap in their staffing and never look to employ someone.

[Chris Stephens]

That is exactly what happens. It is a way for unscrupulous employers to cut their wage bill by essentially introducing unpaid labour. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South mentioned that some people have worked a 40-hour week in an unpaid work trial. They are then not given the job and another person is taken on to do an unpaid work trial for the same length of time.

The research and case studies provided to us by Unite are also supported by the Association of Independent Professionals and the Self-Employed—IPSE—which has looked at the treatment of freelancers. Unpaid work trials are an issue not only in the hospitality sector, but in the creative sector and others. According to IPSE, this has led to an average loss of £5,000 per year for its members, with 20% of its members saying that that is standard practice within the sector.

There is huge public support for my hon. Friend’s private Member’s Bill. While in the Commons Chamber, several Members of Parliament from Scotland saw an advert on Twitter from Mooboo bubble tea, highlighting its unpaid work trial. We questioned Mooboo about that practice, and we found ourselves blocked on Twitter for having the temerity to question the company and its working practices. That led to a petition that surpassed 13,000 signatures. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South also wrote to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs concerning the practices of Mooboo stores.

Has the Minister been in contact with her friends in the Department for Work and Pensions? We know that individuals who refuse or leave a zero-hours contract job can face universal credit sanctions. If someone refuses the offer of an unpaid work trial, will they be subject to a universal credit sanction?

The fact is that the organisation leading the way on employment law is the European Union. The European Parliament is looking at radical alternatives to employment law, leading the way for workers in the gig economy, in stark contrast to the Government’s good work plan, which nibbles around the edges. As my hon. Friends have said, if Members of the Westminster Parliament will not tackle unfairness in the workplace, that job should be handed to the Scottish Parliament, and we will do it for them.