[IER] Where are the workers in the govt's 'reviews into workers' rights'?

Thu Dec 1 17:00:41 GMT 2016

IER News Brief 02/12/16

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news brief

Friday 02nd December 2016

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When taking on the mantle of Prime Minister this summer, Theresa May attempted to re-brand the Tories as "the party of workers" and two new reviews ostensibly serve to back this up with action. But one key stakeholder in her apparent fight for workers' rights is missing - workers.

The Taylor Review <http://www.ier.org.uk/news/may-asks-former-labour-adviser-conduct-workers-rights-inquiry>  was launched in October and saw May hire Matthew Taylor, former advisor to Tony Blair, to head up a new investigation into how the burgeoning 'gig' economy affects workers' rights and whether a new framework of employment law is needed to adapt to the changing world of work.

On Wednesday (30 November), it was announced <http://www.ier.org.uk/news/govt-investigation-gig-economy-involves-no-workers-representatives>  that Taylor and his team would visit locations around the UK to gather evidence for his investigation, naming three 'experts' as his colleagues. Of those three, only one was connected in any way to workers' rights - Chief Executive of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority Paul Broadbent. The others were a businessman - Greg Marsh, Founder of onefinestay, a service providing luxury holiday apartments; and Diane Nicol, an employment lawyer for Pinsent Masons, who specialises in representing employers during industrial relations disputes. According to the legal firm's website, clients have described her as "always commercial".

Despite the review's apparent focus on making work fair in the gig economy, no one with experience of trade disputes and employment law from the worker's point of view has been recruited to lead the report.

Earlier this week, the government issued a green paper <http://www.ier.org.uk/news/govt-publishes-weak-consultation-executive-pay-accused-tokenism>  to launch a consultation into corporate governance and executive pay, with its aim to limit excessive wages at the top and encourage companies to take responsiblity for working conditions. But once again workers' voices were missing. Backtracking on her previous commitment to place workers on company boards, May introduced the paper by saying her government was "unequivocally and unashamedly pro-business", while in one of the only sections proposing the option to give workers a real say in executive pay, the paper reminded us that the government was "not proposing to mandate the direct appointment of employees or other interested parties to company boards."

The Institute of Employment Rights will provide evidence both to the consultation on corporate governance and the Taylor Review, advocating for the 25 policy recommendations put forth in our Manifesto for Labour Law <http://www.ier.org.uk/manifesto> , already adopted by the Labour Party.

We propose that workers should be represented at every level of the economy - sitting on company boards, negotiating with employers at both enterprise and sectoral levels, and represented in parliament through a reinstated Ministry of Labour with a Cabinet seat and a National Economic Forum that brings all stakeholders in society together to scrutinise policy. By strenghtening workers' voices, we can remedy the imbalance of power between employers and their staff. We also recommend simplifying the legal definitions of 'workers' and 'employees' in order to create a universal definition that encompasses everyone in employment, thereby affording them automatic workers' rights. This will be an important step in closing the loopholes exploited by companies like Uber to evade both taxes and their responsibilities to their workers. 

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