Covid-19: Employment Rights

Debate between Christopher Chope and Claudia Webbe

Tuesday 17th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Claudia Webbe (Leicester East) (Ind)]

Thank you, Sir Christopher, for that warning. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) on securing this important debate.

The unprecedented economic impact of the coronavirus has laid bare the weaknesses of UK labour protections. During the crisis, workers’ rights and public health must be prioritised above all else. Yet the Government have allowed corporate giants, including those in receipt of taxpayer bailout funds, to use the pandemic as a cover for further exploiting their workforce.

Nowhere has this been more apparent than in Leicester. The severe exploitation in sections of our garment industry in Leicester have been laid bare and highlighted by a huge increase in casework received by me, a resurgence of reports, and the coronavirus. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs reported that, over a six-year period, one quarter of all UK textile factories caught failing to pay the minimum wage were based in Leicester. With some textile factories offering less than £3.50 an hour, workers are forced to endure horrific and unsafe conditions. That is particularly shocking, but Leicester’s garment industry is indicative of the abrupt decline in workers’ rights and living standards since the neoliberal deindustrialisation revolution of the 1980s. The result has been the biggest squeeze on wages since the early 1800s, with pay for the average worker still lower in real terms than a decade ago. In the fifth richest economy in the world, 14 million people are living in poverty, 9 million of whom live in households with at least one person in work. Our workers need a radically fairer offer, which means raising the minimum wage to at least £10 an hour, and investing in our communities and infrastructure to aid the necessary transition to a green economy.

Trade unions are the best line of defence against workplace exploitation. I pay tribute to all trade unions, including my own, Unite, and others, including PCS, GMB and Unison, to name but a few. Yet the collective ability of workers to organise has been systematically eroded by decades of anti-trade union legislation. The latest Global Rights Index from the International Trade Union Confederation placed the UK among the worst violators of trade union rights in Europe. Forty years ago, eight in 10 workers enjoyed terms and conditions negotiated by a trade union. Today, fewer than one in four workers have that benefit. The Trade Union Act 2016 must be repealed. Trade union autonomy and sectorial collective bargaining must be restored, and the right to take industrial action, in accordance with international law, must be re-established.

One of the most nefarious downward trends in labour protections has been employers’ exploitation of the legal status of workers. We must, therefore, crack down on toxic casualisation. Research by the Trade Union Congress found that 3.7 million people—one in nine UK workers—are in insecure work, including those on zero-hours or short-term contracts, agency workers and temporary casuals, as well as those in low-paid, often bogus, self-employment. Every job should be a good job, one that provides security, dignity and a fair wage. Zero-hours contracts must be eradicated, and hours should be regulated so that each worker gets guaranteed pay for a working week. Rights are meaningless if they are not properly enforced.

The Government must urgently reverse the funding cuts to regulatory bodies, including the Health and Safety Executive and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, to ensure that workers are safe and fairly paid. The Government and sections of big business argue that the mistreatment of workers is inevitable and that rights, fair play and dignity in the workplace are unacceptable costs to the bottom line, yet this free-market race to the bottom has normalised poverty, hopelessness and exploitation in our communities.

I will end by saying that the coronavirus has demonstrated the need for us to build a society built around the principles of solidarity, and in which all of us, regardless of our job, can live in dignity.

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Because I am keen that everybody on the list should be called, I will now impose a three-minute limit. I am afraid that the self-discipline I had hoped for has not materialised so far.