Employment Rights Bill

Yuan Yang Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 21st October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Yuan Yang (Earley and Woodley) (Lab)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, in particular the perhaps interesting fact that, like the majority of journalists at the Financial Times, I am a proud member of the National Union of Journalists. I am able to enjoy that right to membership of a trade union, and the right to assembly and discussion that follows from it, because I am fortunate enough, unlike many of my aunts, cousins and uncles, to be a British citizen living in the UK who enjoys protection of not only my right to vote but my right to collective bargaining and representation in the workplace.

It is fitting that, in this historic debate on this advance in workers’ rights, we in the mother of Parliaments defend not just the right to representation in Parliament through our electoral system, but the right to representation in the workplace through collective bargaining and union access, because strong unions are a workplace form of democracy. I have seen what happens when people are denied that right. I have reported on labour abuses and wildcat strikes—the desperate measures that workers across the international supply chains of Amazon and Apple have gone to when their ability to form a union and advocate for their rights has not been protected by the state. That simply pushes problems underground.

Labour Members know that when workers have issues, there needs to be mediation and they need to be represented properly, through legal means. If that does not happen, it stores up long-term structural challenges for the economy. In the British economy, the wage share of our economic output has fallen since the 1980s. Union representation and density has also fallen throughout that time. It is no coincidence that the two things go together, in the UK and many economies across the OECD. There is a correlation between the strength of unions, and union density, and strong wage growth and worker protections in the workplace.

Beyond the costs to the economy, there are costs to individual households. When I vote for the Bill, I will be thinking of residents and households in my constituency of Earley and Woodley. I will be thinking of the parents I have delivered food parcels to with Woodley Lunch Bunch, who, despite working multiple jobs, are still unable to make ends meet and must resort to using food banks. I will be thinking of the supermarket workers in the Lower Earley Asda, who are—like many of their colleagues across the country—concerned about the threat of fire and rehire.

Above all, I will be thinking of frontline NHS workers in the Royal Berkshire hospital in the centre of Reading, who went to work day after day during the pandemic to clean up after people, suffering the threat of contagion. Many of them—especially those outsourced from private companies—were not afforded statutory sick pay because they were below the lower earnings limit. During the pandemic, the sick pay of many outsourced workers in the NHS was less than a quarter of the national living wage. That is a tragedy. Presenteeism caused by the lack of sick pay costs our economy by reducing productivity and increasing the likelihood of chronic health conditions. I am very proud to support the Bill.