Job Insecurity

Michael Connarty Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

Yes, we are well aware that insecurity in general has negative health effects. It is important, therefore, that we restore security.

It is worth quoting a study that was carried out a year or so ago, which contrasted people’s attitude towards their work now with their attitude roughly a decade ago, in 2003-04. The workplace employment relations study said that despite recession, the level of work satisfaction is higher than it was before. Of course, these are qualitative judgments and we cannot quantify these things, but I accept the basic point—we need job security and confidence—so let me take the various policy issues raised in the motion, and that the Opposition spokesman raised.

We are already dealing with some of the issues the hon. Gentleman raised, as he well knows. The consultation on zero-hours contracts will finish on 13 March. We have made it clear that we would like to take action on exclusivity. We are discussing the practicalities of that and I will return to the House to report on it. He refers in the motion to penalties for minimum wage abuse. He may recall that I explained to the House just over a week ago—I think I was facing the shadow Chief Secretary —that the penalties are being quadrupled. We are bringing forward primary legislation that will extend the penalty system per worker, rather than per company, which will potentially be much more prohibitive.

Contrary to what it says in the motion, we are looking at local enforcement. Joint actions between Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and local councils are already taking place. Again, we have acknowledged that there are issues with false self-employment. The Treasury has admitted that this is a potential area of abuse. It has investigated it and a consultation is going out on how we can deal with the problem. Therefore, a lot of the issues raised in the motion are already being dealt with, as I think the shadow spokesman is well aware.

However, I want to deal with the areas where the hon. Gentleman reheats some of the criticisms of actions we took in the past. On the broad issue of employment rights, I have always made it clear that the hire and fire culture is not something I or we want to see. The people who argued that introducing a hire and fire culture into business was the only way to create employment have been proved as comprehensively wrong as the people who talked about a triple-dip recession, which is why we have not followed their advice.

It would also have been gracious to acknowledge that in some respects employment rights have been massively enhanced, and in two respects in particular: shared parental leave and paternity leave, and extending the right to flexible working. This affects hundreds of thousands of workers and potentially millions, whose rights at work have as a consequence been entrenched.

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

Talking about hire and fire cultures, does the Secretary of State recall saying that there should be no discrimination or victimisation of trade unionists following the dispute at Ineos in my constituency? Is he therefore as shocked as I am to hear that the convenor of shop stewards has today been summarily dismissed by the company on trumped-up charges?

[Vince Cable]

I am surprised at that. I am not an expert on employment law, but I thought that protection from dismissal for trade union activities was a fully protected employment right. If the story is as has just been described, I would have thought the person concerned would have a good case to support his job.

Let me deal with the areas where the Opposition spokesperson was critical. He referred to the fact that we have quite deliberately tried to reduce the scope of employment tribunals, both by extending the qualifying period from one to two years and through the fee system, albeit with remission in respect of people on low incomes, as I think he would acknowledge. That was done for a specific reason. We are trying to ensure that difficult cases are moved from a legal, court framework to a framework of conciliation through ACAS. Lest anyone imagine that ACAS is some right-wing, business-friendly organisation that is against employees, let me point out—I do not know whether this has been picked up by the Opposition—that I recently appointed Brendan Barber as its head, so those whose employment disputes are referred to it can be pretty confident that they will be dealt with properly. It is surely right and sensible for small and medium-sized companies in particular not to tie up a lot of time and money in litigious processes when their disputes can be dealt with much better through conciliation.

The motion also refers to the dilution, as it has been described, of health and safety standards, although the hon. Member for Streatham did not refer to that in his speech. I do not know whether he has read the Löfstedt report, but it makes the position very clear. Essentially, what we have suggested is that where there is high-risk employment—and there is a great deal of it in agriculture, construction and manufacturing—the inspection regime should remain intact, but where there is found to be a low risk and that finding is evidence-based, the level of inspections should be reduced. No attempt is being made to undermine the safety regime applying to dangerous occupations.

It is worth bearing it in mind that, under the present Government, as under the last, British safety records are exemplary. According to our most recent survey, there were 148 fatalities last year. That is 148 too many, but the figure is comparable to the figure for the best previous year, 2009-2010, and significantly better than the figures in any other previous years. It means that we have a better health and safety record than almost any other country, including Germany, and that we are three times safer than France. Members should try to remember that important context before making throwaway references to diluting health and safety.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

We are paying the penalty for all the interventions from people who did not put their names down to speak, Mr Speaker.

I want to focus on one part of the motion—the part that states that the Government’s watering down of rights, including protections against unfair dismissal, might be affecting the job security of people in this country. My main concern is to illustrate that describing the rights of workers as a burden on business sends a signal that has led to some businesses moving backwards in time and thinking that they can ill treat their work force with impunity.

The House will recall the threat to the INEOS petrochemical and refinery site at Grangemouth in my constituency at the end of 2013. At the time of the agreement that saved the plant, the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills said that there should be no victimisation of trade unionists by the company. At the time, I asserted that the company had already victimised the joint convener, Stephen Deans, who was forced to resign, but I accept that the Secretary of States probably meant to call for that non-victimisation from the end of the dispute.

I was pleased when the Secretary of State seemed to say that he was as shocked as I was, and as the INEOS work force, my local community and elected representatives from all parties were, when we heard that the remaining convener had been summarily dismissed today. I investigated in order to find out the purpose of the dismissal and the charges against that trade union convener, who happens to be the vice-chair of Unite in the UK. One charge was that an article in the Daily Record had been commented on by the Scottish secretary of Unite, who has nothing to do with the plant, and that the convener had not done enough to influence that person not to write in that paper criticising the company. I criticised the company on the facts: there will be substantial job losses when it shuts the naphtha plant, the butadiene plant and the benzene plant. That was what was said in the article.

The second charge referred to:

“Comments attributed to you during a meeting held with the refinery management team on 12th December 2013 as detailed in the notes presented to you with the disciplinary invitation letter.”

That meeting was when the convener pointed out to the company that the shift schedule it had put together for the maintenance shutdown of the refinery would not work. The odd thing is that the company has now adopted his suggested schedule for work during the shutdown while sacking him for suggesting it in the first place. That is a trumped-up charge to get rid of the convener because, in this day and age, the company wants to get rid of the trade union.

After further investigation, I discovered that the company has been going around telling the elected shop stewards that they are not suitable people, that their credentials will be removed and that management will decide who will be the conveners and the representatives. Last night, I sought out the International Labour Organisation conventions on the matter. They are convention 87, on freedom of association and the protection of the right to organise, and convention 98, on the right to organise and collective bargaining, and they have both been breached by the company. I thought that perhaps something had happened under the UK Government to weaken those conventions, so I looked up the rights of trade unionists in the UK on the gov.uk website. The section headed “Trade union membership: your employment rights” states that people have the right to be a trade unionist and to be an activist with a trade union, and that they will be represented by their elected convener or shop steward. I went to the next section, entitled “Role of your trade union rep”, and that role is to represent members’ views to management and take part in discussions with management.

Every source is saying that a company does not have the right to sack a convener for telling the management that the work force have a different view. A company has no right to sack a convener because it does not like the fact that his union wrote something about it in a newspaper. The Secretary of State has underwritten £150 million in loan guarantees for the company to fund its expansion into using ethane from America and it has received £9 million from the Scottish Government in regional selective assistance, so I call on the Secretary of State to make these people come to the table and realise that they cannot breach ILO conventions or the laws of this land by sacking people summarily. I demand that they reinstate the convener forthwith and do what we all said. There should be no recriminations and no victimisation; let us negotiate the way forward. This is an important issue for my constituents and the economy of both Scotland and this country and we cannot have bully boys. I name Declan Sealy as the person who is behind all this in the company.