Judith Cummins
Main Page: Judith Cummins (Labour - Bradford South)
Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)
In my contribution to the Budget debate, I will focus on employment. We spend a lot of time in the House discussing unemployment, but I will talk about a group of people who are often forgotten or ignored—the growing number of people who work multiple low-paid jobs to make ends meet.
This Budget fails to address the regressive tax system, a hostile benefits system and a regulatory framework that encourages all risks being borne by workers, leaving the lowest paid in our democracy still at the risk of exploitative employers and the hard-pressed public sector having to outsource work to the lowest bidder. I will read a quote from Anna—not her real name—who works two cleaning jobs, as well as two further jobs in catering in retail:
“I am exhausted. I get up at 4.30 in the morning. I leave the house at 5.10 for a 6 am start and a 10 am finish, then I come to my second job at 11 am and I’ve got all day here. I finish at 4 pm here…and go to my son’s to get a sandwich or something and then go to my next job. That one is five nights a week and it’s a very hard job. The evening job is really hard. I get really tired when it’s about 8 pm. It’s about midnight when I get to bed. But if I didn’t do these jobs I wouldn’t be able to live. I wouldn’t be able to survive.”
Anna told her experience to two researchers, Dr Andrew Smith from the University of Bradford and Dr Jo McBride from Durham University, who have aptly named their research, “The Forgotten Workers: Low Paid Workers in Multiple Employment”.
Anna’s testimony should trouble us all deeply. That our economy functions in such a way that people are unable to survive without having to work several jobs simultaneously is a sign of just how flawed it is. These workers are significantly more likely to be women, which is unsurprising as 70% of workers contracted for less than 16 hours a week are women. They are likely to be in sectors such as care, cleaning, retail and catering. Unfortunately, the deeply unbalanced nature of our national economy means that this issue is more prevalent in areas such as mine and others across the north.
I turn now to some of the policies that I strongly believe would help to reverse the growth of low-paid insecure work and ensure that everyone has a decent, secure and well-paid job. First, on pay, it is clear that we are living through an extraordinary period of economic unfairness. Real wages are still below their 2008 level and are not due to overtake it until 2025. According to the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, over the past five years, nine in 10 workers have seen no improvement in their financial situation, with the majority feeling worse off. We need urgent action to give millions of workers across the country a pay rise. I support USDAW’s “Time For Better Pay” campaign for a minimum wage of £10 an hour for everyone above the age of 18. The current situation, where we have multiple minimum wages for different age groups, is unfair and wrong. I also strongly support the real living wage. The announced rises in the national living wage and the minimum wage do not go anywhere far enough.
Secondly, we must take steps to make employment more secure and regular. The gig economy is often discussed, but even workers in sectors such as cleaning, catering and retail face an increasingly precarious situation at work. The issue goes beyond zero-hour contracts, with many workers employed on eight-hour or 10-hour contracts but then expected to work up to 40 or 60 hours when required. These irregular and unpredictable working hours are emblematic of the flexibility demanded by employers for their own benefit, with none given in return. Remarkably, according to the TUC, only one in 40 net jobs created between 2008 and 2014 were full time. That is not Britain’s job miracle that the Chancellor boasted of today, but workers without guaranteed hours who find it difficult to access mortgages or even to budget for everyday bills. USDAW is calling for 16-hours minimum contracts, with a reduction only if workers explicitly opt out. Most importantly, we need contracts that are based on the hours an individual normally works, providing financial certainty to workers and ending the exploitation of low-hours contracts.
Thirdly, we need Government action to protect and enhance a proper work-life balance. That means extending rights on holiday allowance, maternity and paternity leave, and sick pay. Finally, underpinning that, we need a restoration of full trade union rights at work and a recognition of the importance of trade unions in tipping the balance of power back towards working people and away from exploitative companies.
I am bringing my speech to an end, but I want to quote Thomas, who has six jobs:
“You don’t feel in control of your life—it controls you.”
“Take back control” has become a popular slogan recently, but it is clear that we urgently need to give workers back control over their own lives. What Anna, Thomas and others like them deserve is to be able to work in dignity: to earn a decent living, have time to spend with their families, and know that they are protected in the workplace. That those modest aims are out of the reach of millions of workers is a damning indictment of the state of the economy under this Conservative Government.
What we needed in this Budget was decisive action to protect and strengthen workers, and to rebalance the economy so that it works for all people and all regions of our country. The world of work has changed dramatically in recent years. We need new rights for this new world. The Chancellor’s Budget has decisively failed to deliver that. The strivers, the carers and the grafters in Bradford, and across the country, deserve better.