Fire and Rehire Debate
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Mick Whitley
Main Page: Mick Whitley (Labour - Birkenhead)Department Debates - View all Mick Whitley's debates with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
Fire and Rehire
Mick Whitley Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab) [V]
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Murray, and I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) for her hard work in securing this debate. I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
This month, hundreds of British Gas engineers, including many living in my constituency of Birkenhead, were sacked by the parent company Centrica. Despite many years of loyal service, they were thrown on the scrapheap because they refused to accept a devastating cut to their pay and working conditions. They were not alone: from Heathrow airport to the Go North West buses in Manchester, one in 10 British workers has been threatened with fire and rehire practices over the past year. With 70% of those companies continuing to turn a profit, this is not about economic necessity, but about large corporations cynically exploiting a public health crisis to further line the pockets of shareholders.
We have heard plenty of warm words from Ministers at the Dispatch Box about this issue. The Prime Minister has called fire and rehire “unacceptable”, and the Leader of the House has called it “bad practice”, but they still refuse to act. Workers in the UK enjoy no more protections at work today than they did when the pandemic began, because this Government care more about cosying up to their friends in the private sector than they do about standing up for British workers and the very communities they have promised to level up. That is why they have sat on a report from ACAS for two long months; it is why, when my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) asked the Prime Minister to extend his support to British Gas engineers, he acted as if it was the first he had heard about it. I doubt anyone believes that.
Voters in the so-called red wall seats should ask themselves why there is not one single Conservative Back Bencher present today. The answer is simple: they fundamentally do not care. What the British people need now is decisive action to stamp out this abhorrent practice once and for all, so I call on the Minister to ensure that measures outlawing fire and rehire are included in the Queen’s Speech next month.
It is time that the Government put their money where their mouth is, but we must go further still. We have to roll back decades of anti-trade union legislation that has fostered a culture in which employers feel free to attack the rights and conditions of their workers with total impunity, as so many have during the pandemic. If the Government are really serious about building back better in the wake of this terrible pandemic, they need to not only put an end to the plague of fire and rehire tactics, but stop seeing trade unions as the enemy within and realise the vital role they have to play in building an economy that truly works for everyone.