The Future of Work

Debate between Kirsten Oswald and Siobhain McDonagh

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.