The Future of Work

Kirsten Oswald Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the future of work.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McDonagh. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting the time for this debate.

It is troubling that we are having this debate against the background of a continuing pandemic, which greatly affects how we can engage with the issue. Unfortunately, this House itself is a case study of how the world of work has not kept pace with events and technological advantages that could have allowed much wider participation in this debate. I have had to travel all the way from East Renfrewshire to speak here, despite the existence of perfectly good digital options. That is nonsensical in the middle of a pandemic.

As a member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, I have a particular interest in the terms and the subject of this debate. I thank the CIPD for its work on this issue, as well as the Institute for the Future of Work, Scope, the disability charity, the City & Guilds Group, the Chartered Management Institute, the Scottish Trades Union Congress, trade unions, local authorities and many others that are contributing to this debate. It is clear to them all and to workers all over Scotland and beyond that we cannot and must not go back to the same old same old. The status quo was not right before, and it is certainly not right for the future.

We need to ask ourselves searching questions about the way work should look, including about hybrid or remote working and the prospect of a shorter working week, and the fundamental question about what value we place on the jobs of those who keep us, our countries and our families functioning and safe. We need to tackle head-on the fact that structural inequality is inbuilt in the fabric and systems of work, and use technology more wisely in the future to ensure that bias on grounds of race, sex and disability, to name a few, is stripped out of recruitment and promotion decisions. We need to do better, and this is the time to take that reality forward.

I have spent much of my professional life looking at work from the perspective of the employer-employee relationship. However, working in further education, I also contributed to preparing young people for work, and increasingly helping older people move to the next phase of a multifaceted working life.

The world of work, and with it the education and skills sector, changed significantly long before covid, but this crisis means that we must take stock and re-examine what the future of work should look like. A recent report by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Task Force on the Work of the Future mirrors the findings of the UK’s Future of Work Commission. Both reports highlight that technological change is not eliminating work; it is replacing existing work and creating new work. More importantly, it is changing the quality of jobs and access to them, driving new forms of polarisation and work inequality. It is estimated that 60% of the jobs being done today in America did not exist in 1940; the figures for Scotland and the UK may not differ greatly.

Change in the world of work is constant, but too often the process has been poorly handled, and many parts of the UK bear the scars. As we move beyond this pandemic, we have to learn from past mistakes. The effect of previous Conservative Governments can be seen in too many areas of deep-rooted deprivation across the UK, where existing jobs were closed down before investment in new jobs and skills could build an alternative future.

The brutality of this transition at its worst was recalled in Scotland just last month. The Scottish Government are recommending that hundreds of Scottish miners be pardoned for offences that they were convicted of 35 years ago as they struggled to defend their jobs, their industry and the wellbeing of their communities against an onslaught from Margaret Thatcher’s Government. As the Chancellor has acknowledged, although it would be better if he also acted on this, a decent society should not leave people behind.

The issue we are talking about today are profound and long term. Changes that fundamentally shift the world of work include developments in technology, the reality of climate change and catastrophes such as wars; and clearly this pandemic is having a huge impact on employment. The situation is not helped by a blundering, blustering Prime Minister and a dithering UK Government, who leave announcements of support until they are too late to stop firms folding and jobs being lost. Andy Haldane, chief economist at the Bank of England, has said that we are at risk of returning to 1980s levels of unemployment—truly a return to the Thatcher years.

Recovery from the pandemic will not be helped by the Prime Minister delivering a half-baked Brexit that will undermine many sectors of the economy. According to the latest employer survey by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the rise in unemployment will be accompanied by a reduction in training investment, reinforcing a long-standing trend of declining investment in UK workplace training. Just as George Osborne’s austerity agenda held back recovery post-2008, the UK cannot reshape its economy on the back of slashed training budgets.

Kirstie Donnelly, the chief executive of the City & Guilds Group, has warned that

“mass unemployment…left unchecked, will scar the futures of a generation”.

City & Guilds has highlighted the difficulty in accessing work for those who were already disadvantaged, with lower use of personal contacts, previous employers or recruitment consultants. Although working from home can be valuable, it is not a panacea. A recent survey found that those with the lowest household income were six times less likely to be able to work from home. Also, the sectors most impacted by covid include those with the highest share of workers from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities, and with its evident effect on those with disabilities or underlying health conditions, the economic impact of this pandemic will be projected into the future unless there is conscious mitigation.

Kirstie Donnelly is calling on the Government to redirect funding to support skills development that promotes social mobility; perhaps the Minister can indicate if that call has been heard. The Scottish Government have announced a £60 million young person’s guarantee, to ensure that everyone aged between 16 and 24 has the opportunity of work, education or training. Scotland will also have a £25 million national training transition fund, to help up to 10,000 people aged 25 or over to develop the skills required to move into sectors with the greatest potential for growth.

More needs to be done, but with major economic and fiscal powers resting with the Treasury, the Scottish Government need Treasury backing to go further. Rather than bypassing them, as the UK Government shamefully plan to do, the Scottish Government need the Treasury to work with them to address Scotland’s needs in a way that meets Scotland’s aspirations. Scotland does not want another Dido Harding or Rupert Soames to be parachuted in to tell us what we need and what we have to do.

We must look at creating a real baseline of fairness below which people do not fall, whether they are in work, education or employment, or are temporarily or permanently displaced from the workforce. As an alternative, we in the SNP are calling for changes in approach, raising the basic floor of protection and welfare, and for a proper examination of alternatives, such as a universal basic income that recognises and supports people as individuals. It is support for people, for workers and for transition between jobs, firms and sectors that needs urgent attention from the Government, not just protecting the status quo of businesses that are not required to maintain fair work standards or reduce executive pay or shareholder pay-outs.

Through their flagship Fair Work First policy, the Scottish Government lead the way. They are rewarding and encouraging employers to adopt fair work practices by attaching fair work criteria to grants and other funding and to contracts awarded by and across the public sector. They ask employers to commit to paying the real living wage, making no inappropriate use of zero-hours contracts, and providing channels for an effective voice for workers, such as trade union recognition.

I was pleased to back the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain in its fight for equal protection between those who work in the gig economy and those on standard employment contracts. Shamefully, some businesses that rely on workers in the gig economy have continued to operate during the pandemic but have not accepted responsibility for the health and safety of their workforce. We cannot build a resilient and flexible labour market by disadvantaging even further the most disadvantaged in our society, or by stripping workers of the rights that we all used to take for granted. That is why my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) is working across parties on his Employment (Dismissal and Re-employment) (No. 2) Bill, which has the backing of major trade unions including Unite, the British Airline Pilots Association and GMB Scotland. It is a response to disgraceful actions by companies including Centrica and British Airways, which tried to use the cover of the pandemic to lay off thousands of workers, only to rehire them on diminished terms.

The UK Government have said that they will not use Brexit to erode workers’ rights. Those are two real opportunities for them to prove it. Will the Minister make it clear that the Government accept the ruling of the High Court, and take the action needed to implement it? Will she also commit to backing my hon. Friend’s Bill, or to bringing forward similar provisions in the Government’s own employment Bill to protect and enhance workers’ rights, as was promised in the Queen’s Speech? If the UK Government will not act, they should devolve the necessary powers and let the Scottish Government continue to match or exceed EU standards. After all, that is what was promised, and Scotland never voted to leave the EU in the first place. It is no wonder that people increasingly see a better independent future.

The pandemic has accelerated existing trends in the world of work. How we build on the technologies and the sectors that have expanded since March this year may mark the pandemic as a tipping point for changes in the world of work and the economy. If we want to build back fairer and stronger, we need to be clear about what we want to achieve. The Future of Work Commission argues that the purpose of work is to support health and wellbeing, and to enable individuals to flourish. Economic policy should reflect that goal. A member of the commission, Professor Michael Sandel, said:

“The pandemic has highlighted a familiar problem: The best-paying jobs are not necessarily the ones that contribute most to the common good, and some low-paying jobs have greater social value than their market value would suggest.”

We can either reflect and act, or allow ourselves to be driven headlong by those keen to capitalise on the position that they have gained over this unique period and hang the human consequences.

The economic movement from high streets and retail centres to digital platforms and delivery vans has without doubt pushed existing legislative and regulatory frameworks to the limit. The court victory by the IWGB last week should just be a start in bringing them into alignment. It is not acceptable for the operators of new technologies to prosper by stripping workers of their rights and protections. They are misusing legislation designed to create flexibility to underpin a new dominance for the interests of capital. The UK Government must recognise that and act.

The CIPD is working with the Institute for the Future of Work and the Carnegie Trust to develop guidance to ensure that investment in new technology optimises returns not only in organisational performance, but in job quality. The findings from that work must help to identify areas where legislative change is needed. It is one thing to have Jeff Bezos planning to use drones for deliveries, but the operators of global platforms must not be allowed to treat their workforce as drones, stripped of basic levels of sick pay, never mind the enhanced level that they should have during a pandemic to make sure that they can comfortably self-isolate when required.

Case studies and analysis by the Institute for the Future of Work highlight imbalances in information, wealth and power that come from emerging global platforms. They demonstrate that our legal framework has not kept pace with the new automated technologies, with their use of algorithmic and artificial intelligence-based decision-assisting tools. The UK Government’s hands-off approach to the issue is negligent and flies in the face of commitments to address structural inequalities at work. We need a fresh approach if we are to ensure that historical inequalities are not projected into the future. That is why I support the call for a new accountability for algorithms Act.

The growth of home working has also led to a growing interest in, and growing concern about, such techniques as keyboard and camera monitoring. In a recent survey, the trade union Prospect found that only a third of workers had even heard of such techniques. That should be of concern to us all.

We need to look across this complex subject as a matter of urgency. We need a dedicated work 5.0 strategy, and it needs to be produced jointly with civil society, trade unions and academics, as well as with businesses, to ensure that we can find a fair, inclusive and forward-looking approach to work. We need the UK Government to do what the Scottish Social Justice and Fairness Commission is already doing. As we approach Brexit, that has never been more important.

In conclusion, I reflect on the comment by David Autor, co-chair of the MIT future of work report, which was published yesterday. He said:

“The sky is not falling, but it is…lowering.”

This UK Government need to reprioritise future good work as a cross-cutting role and they need to act now.

[Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)]

We have five speakers in the debate before we go to the Front-Bench speakers, so I ask people to consider an informal time limit of seven minutes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Danny Kruger]

I agree that there is an important role for Government, both in cushioning the effects of change and in helping to nudge change in the direction where it will be the most beneficial for us all. We cannot stand in the way of what technology is doing to the world of work, but we can definitely make it a more comfortable experience for our people. I agree with that. I shall come to what the Government might do in a moment.

Although there has been an acceleration of many of the dangerous and destructive trends of recent years through the lockdown, we have also had a glimpse of a different future. I was going to say that the danger is having millions of people in forced unemployment, with all the harm that entails. The hon. Member for East Renfrewshire raised the prospect of universal basic income, but I do not believe that we as a species are ready for permanent idleness.

[Kirsten Oswald]

I gently point out that universal basic income is not in any way, shape or form about enforced idleness. I encourage the hon. Gentleman to look around the subject and see what potential there is for better work, and more equal and fair work, under a universal basic income system.

[Danny Kruger]

It may be that we are quibbling over terms, and I recognise and accept that there is a role for Government in subsidising some wages. My concern is that there is danger in the idea that it is possible for Government to provide all the income for all the people, so that they do not have to work—which is, of course, the end result of the proposal for universal basic income.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kenny MacAskill (East Lothian) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) for bringing this debate to the Chamber. What we have to do—and many Members have already done so—is set out the context, both past and present. Change is inevitable. It is coming, and it may just be an age factor, but I realise we cannot roll back time and it is not all bad. There are challenges, but there are also huge opportunities. I do not believe that the future need be either dystopian, or indeed, apocalyptic. The future can be bright if we fight and deliver a fair and just society for all, and that is what we need do.

I also think we need to remember the past, because it was not all halcyon days. My hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire was right to praise the Scottish Government for pardoning minors for convictions in the industrial struggle back in the 1980s, but let us not have any rosy picture about the nature of the jobs: the work in the pits, the work in the yards, the work offshore and the work on fishing boats. It was hard. It was dirty. It was dangerous. I do not think any of us regret that our children are not required to serve in that. So let us remember with pride, but let us also remember that in some ways, the change—in the automation and moving away from those jobs—has been a good thing. The same can occur in a society if we mould it in the manner that we want.

Change is inevitable, as has been mentioned by all speakers. Pre- and post-covid, there were changes. Before covid, in IT automation, the pace, the number of jobs; that was referred to by others, and we spoke about the union learning fund. The number of jobs that youngsters entering into the labour market are required to carry out will be significantly greater than in the days of my grandfather, who almost got a gold watch for going into the same place day in, day out for most of his life. Post covid, the changes have simply accelerated, and we are required to bear that in mind. There are huge challenges, that I will come on to, but equally, we have seen how Zoom has transformed with our very own eyes in these last few months.

New jobs have come about, but sadly, far too many jobs have been lost. Therefore, the first target has to be tackling unemployment. History tells us the dangers that all societies—and especially our own—can face from the challenges of mass unemployment coming around once again. It is not just the difficulties that can be faced in the body politic in the world of politics and governance, but the challenges that individuals face when we see our jobs go, and then heroin and alcohol flood in, so we require to tackle unemployment with a will and with vigour.

That comes back to the basic premise: we need to minimise the challenges and we need to maximise the opportunities. It can be done, because things do need to be done. We do need to upskill our people, as the buzzword goes; we do need to deliver that green new deal to tackle climate warming; we do need to ensure that society allows access for all, especially the disabled and most especially, the young.

[Kirsten Oswald]

I am particularly troubled by the story that a young friend of mine told me. My young friend has a learning disability, but has held down a job and done very well at that job for a significant number of years. He recently lost that job because of the challenges of covid, and I am particularly concerned by what this will mean for people such as him in the future. We cannot build that inequality into the future. What does my hon. Friend think about that?

[Kenny MacAskill]

That is why we have to ensure that we tighten employment legislation that has been loosened over recent years. Other speakers mentioned that, but this is about ensuring rights for all and, as I say, especially the disabled. It also comes on to the point about workplace changes. I have mentioned the nature of the jobs that we have lost, but there was one benefit that came from them, and that was unionisation. It was and remains important that workers have rights. I always remember reading that the largest single site employer in the United States is not Boeing; it is not even the Pentagon. It is Disney World. I recall that my grandfather started his training as a carpenter at Parkhead Forge. It was the largest single site employer in Scotland—up to 40,000 people—and is now a retail shopping centre. The problem is that it has brought about the gig economy, and made it difficult for people to come together to organise. We must have a balance between capital and labour.

Mention has been made about the IWGB. I have been involved with it on foster parents while others have worked with it on the gig economy, but we need to ensure employment rights. That is fundamental. We must address the nature of the work that is taking place, because the gig economy is grinding people down. I am fortunate enough to be a good friend of Paul Laverty, who, along with Ken Loach, wrote the movie “Sorry We Missed You”. That is fiction, but it is based in fact: the story could have been written in 101 different ways, all about the exploitation of individuals who are low paid, hired and fired, and used and abused. They are human beings, not battery hens. As political bodies, we and the Government must ensure that we provide protections for them. That is most certainly necessary.

We must also remember the challenges that are coming around because of covid and those that existed before, such as the gig economy, which the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) mentioned. During my brief time-out from politics, I went away and wrote books. I wrote one about the dispute in Glasgow in 1919, when, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) will know, there was also a huge strike in Belfast, as well as in areas of England. What people forget is that that was not just a battle in George Square between the forces of law and order and our industrial workers, but a strike for a 40-hour week.

If we went out in the streets today and spoke to people, they would say, “Give me a 40-hour week. I’d be grateful if I had a 40-hour week and could live on what I earn.” More than a century on, it is shameful that people cannot get a living wage. That movement was driven because men were coming back after being demobilised from the first world war and there were going to be challenges. Before they went on strike for a 40-hour week, they had argued for a 32-hour week.

We need to start looking at a four-day week, but ensuring that people can pay their way. Countries such as Sweden have shown that working for four days means the same—or increased—productivity as working for five. Far too many people in our country are not working for 40 hours a week, but for far longer. We need to address that because, frankly, it is shameful and there is a better way.

This is not just about the gig economy, but about the type of work that needs to be done. The hon. Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) was quite right: social care is absolutely essential, but it cannot be used and abused. It was hard enough to be on a fishing boat or in the pits, but working for hour upon hour on your feet as a social care worker is miserable. We need to ensure that those jobs are properly recompensed and protected, which comes back to the point about balance between capital and labour, the need for unionisation, and the need for a living wage and not simply a minimum wage.

Society can be better, but there is work to do. We must build and retrofit houses, and do the same for schools, hospitals and other buildings that will be necessary to meet the climate change challenges that we face. We can choose a better way. There are significant challenges; we cannot turn back time, but if the Government are prepared, willing and able to ensure that the rights of workers are protected and that the excesses of individual employers are reined in—there are good employers out there, but some are deeply exploitative—we can get that balance.

Countries such as Germany, which has a right-of-centre Government whom I would not necessarily support, have found that better productivity, better quality of life, and higher standards of living can be and are better delivered by respecting trade unions and even having them on boards of directors—not just in public companies, but in private ones. Will the Minister ensure that adequate workers’ rights and protections are provided? If we provide them, the future can be bright and we can build back better, but the Government must ensure that they take charge to protect workers’ rights, rather than allowing a race to the bottom.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mims Davies]

No; if I may, I will make some progress.

My Department is leading a cross-Government steering group, with key responsibilities in terms of gathering evidence to inform the right decision making. We have touched on the issue of skills this afternoon. There will be £3 billion, when the skills fund is Barnettised, to have a national skills fund to help adults to get the key skills for the economy of the future.

Also, as a part of wider Government work, I am working with the Department for Education and the Department for Business, Enterprise and Industrial Strategy to ensure that all our DWP claimants have the skills sought by local employers, so that there is a clear link between the local labour market and employers.

The hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra), the Opposition spokesperson, asked for a plan for jobs. We have one—a £30 billion plan for jobs for every part of the country, and for every business, so that businesses can have the confidence through the furlough scheme to retain and retrain staff, and also to be able to hire people by working with DWP and across Government.

We are doing that through the Kickstart scheme, which my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes referred to. This is an incredibly important job creation scheme. It is a £2 billion project that runs through to December next year, so that our young people have the opportunity to get on the employment ladder.

We have our expanded youth offer, including new youth hubs that will bring together all the options that our young people need; sector-based work academy programmes; Job Entry Targeted Support, which will also launch in Scotland in January, is a brand new and targeted support scheme that is already rolling out in England and Wales; we will boost our flexible support fund; and our work coaches are paramount. Conditionality was mentioned earlier. Our work coaches are more empowered than ever to focus on a claimant’s needs and on the challenges they face, to ensure that we have a clear link between our claimants and our work coaches, so that we can support our claimants. We have tailored programmes to help people’s individual circumstances more than ever to make sure that they can get a job and, more importantly, progress in the labour market. The economic outcome will be difficult, but as it becomes clearer, we are targeting our support at the right people and the right areas.

[Kirsten Oswald]

Before the Minister concludes, could she put her mind to the specific things that I asked her to consider? In particular, can she can tell us whether the Government will accept the ruling of the High Court? Will they take forward the fire and rehire provisions, or similar ones, that my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) has put forward?

[Mims Davies]

Those are matters for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, but I can write to the hon. Lady about them. I also note that she mentioned HSE, safety at work and other areas for which I am responsible, which were important points. She also mentioned wellbeing at work, which was our absolute priority before the pandemic hit, and will continue to be.

I am determined that those who were struggling to progress before the pandemic hit—who were perhaps locked out of the labour market before that, despite the record employment—are not left behind. Our focus as a Department and a Government is to build back greener and stronger. That will be powered by technology and skills; by matching retraining with new jobs to secure a better future; and vitally, as we have heard, by connecting communities with all opportunities so that we can level up our economy by ensuring that our labour market thrives throughout the UK.

[Kirsten Oswald]

I again thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing us to have this debate. It has been an important discussion and the speeches have been excellent, thoughtful and wide-ranging. I acknowledge the breadth of topics covered and the importance of covering all those topics. Undoubtedly change will come in this area, so we need to look to the future, but we also need to look to action.

Covid-19 is clearly accelerating changes in work, as well as a number of significant employment challenges. We have to look to the future in that context. We have to consider artificial intelligence and technology, and how to use it well and positively. Some Scottish local authorities are looking at how to innovate there; in fact, many organisations are looking at technology in the context of work. Perhaps the Leader of the House, if he is watching the debate or reading the transcript, might reflect on that. We also need to look at the issue in the context of equality. We have to build in equality as we move forward. We cannot allow the pandemic or technology to ever be an excuse to perpetuate inequality at work.

As we go forward, we need to consider the issue of fairness at the heart of all we do. The work of the Social Justice and Fairness Commission is worth looking at; the importance of sustainable and fair work cannot be underestimated. Dignity should sit in the middle of everything. We should consider how work needs to look: do we have to have a five-day week or could we move to a four-day week? We should look at the way that collaboration at work makes things possible. The trade unions, such as the Scottish Trades Union Congress, are doing excellent work on that.

Different organisations are considering the future of work, including the new all-party parliamentary group on the future of work. We need to consider that along with the employees, who are central to it all. There is nothing inevitable about the discussion that we have had today, or about what is coming down the track in terms of the future of work, except for one thing, which is that the good political decisions and good judgments that we make today can make work better and fairer for tomorrow.

Question put and agreed to,

Resolved,

That this House has considered the future of work.