Employment Rights

John McDonnell Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I do not disagree with the views of the hon. Member for Watford (Richard Harrington) about the need for an element of balance in relationships at work, and the need to secure long-term employment. I think that those are our overall objectives: we want to create a productive industrial relations climate. My right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher) was right to end his speech by referring to the need to engage with workers and involve them in their firms’ plans.

Let me give four brief examples of abuses in parts of industry that we need to address in the House. The Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union is currently involved in a dispute at the Hovis company in Wigan. Hovis has been taken over by Premier Foods, and there have been a great many layoffs. The union has negotiated as best it can in order to secure the long-term future of the company, as well as what is best for its members who are being laid off, but there have been abuses, one of which seems to be occurring in other parts of industry as well.

Hovis in Wigan started to take on workers who were paid less and had less favourable conditions than the existing workers, and also to use zero-hours contracts. That led to a strike. A negotiation took place and the union thought that the dispute had been resolved, but the company then started to employ agency workers. It used what is referred to as the “Swedish derogation”, which means that an agency can employ staff directly, and those staff can then work alongside others while being paid less and experiencing less favourable conditions. Members may recall that the hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) raised the issue in the House only a month ago, in connection with Tesco. Such practices cannot be acceptable according to anyone’s standards of decency or justice, and we need to look into the Swedish derogation and how it is being abused by some employers.

The Hovis dispute is still going on, and is becoming bitter as a result of the Government’s intransigence and its use of various different devices. The union has taken every possible opportunity to try to secure a negotiated settlement.

Let me give another example. For a number of years, the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, which represents the majority of seafarers in this country, has lobbied Government—the last one and this one—in an attempt to ensure that the national minimum wage applies to all seafarers working on ships operating out of UK ports. What has been happening is that the minimum wage has not been applied to those who are not European economic area nationals. On some ships, people working alongside British seafarers and doing the same job as them are being paid £2.25 or £2.35 an hour, which is not acceptable.

The last Government introduced some legislation and undertook a consultation, and a working party was set up. The current Government have retained that working party and have made recommendations, but companies are still paying ridiculously, appallingly low wages. We have just discovered that Condor Ferries, which sends ferries to the Channel Islands, is paying people £2.35 an hour, completely ignoring the national minimum wage legislation. No one finds that acceptable.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton mentioned railway track workers. Network Rail is now using hundreds of sub-contractors. Members may recall that track maintenance was brought in-house because of health and safety problems that resulted in some tragic accidents, including two near my constituency, one at Paddington and one at Southall. I attended the funeral of a driver who died in one of those accidents. We discovered that track workers were being employed by contractors and sub-contractors, and there was no supervision of safety whatsoever. That is the case again now, because, as my right hon. Friend pointed out, fewer than 10% of track workers are now employed directly by Network Rail.

We are finding that a new device is being used, as has been mentioned. Track workers are urged—almost browbeaten—to sign on to payroll companies, which the sub-contractors then use. Workers have to pay the payroll companies just to be paid themselves, but it is a device used by those companies to avoid tax. We need to examine the practice, both as a tax avoidance issue, which is a scandal, and because some track workers are contracted at the same time by up to 20 different contractors. They are given bits of work by each of those employers, and they are sometimes pressurised into zero-hours contracts as well. I believe that Network Rail’s overall supervision from the contractor to the sub-contractor to the worker is breaking down, posing a real risk to health and safety.

We discussed blacklisting at length during the debate on the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill, and also a few months ago. The blacklisting of workers continues. We have just had an example of Crossrail blacklisting a worker. There was a campaign which resulted in mass demonstrations, with hundreds of workers turning up on the site and blocking the roads around it. There was a great deal of coverage in the press, which Members may have seen. Crossrail has now settled and that worker has gone back to work.

The case demonstrates that that still happens and that blacklisted workers still find it difficult to secure compensation. Legal cases are taking place. We need to come back to the proposal of having a compensation scheme. We know from the Consulting Association, which was mentioned the other day, which companies were participants. They should be brought together to set up a voluntary compensation scheme. If they do not, we should introduce a statutory compensation scheme.

Finally, exploitation takes place nearer home as well. The Members Tea Room staff are having their contracts torn up. Some of them have been on those contracts for 20 years or so. They are told that the new contract is a re-interpretation of existing contracts. It means that their terms and conditions are being cut. We need to ensure that we protect our colleagues who work alongside us in this building, as well as others for whom we want to secure employment rights.