Covid-19: Employment Rights

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the covid-19 outbreak and employment rights.

It is fair to say that the pandemic has stress-tested a great many things across our civic, political and private lives. Day in, day out, jobs are being cut in many sectors across our economy. The jobs market is no exception, and neither, sadly, are employment rights. For far too many people an employment contract offers zero protection and has been rendered worthless, but despite some warm words the Government have not lifted a finger to help.

My interest in fire and rehire stems from my duty as a constituency MP for Glasgow airport, from my role as a transport spokesman and from my membership of the Transport Committee. Firing and rehiring emanates from the aviation sector, and in particular from British Airways. Among our first witnesses when the Committee looked at the impact of covid-19 on transport was Willie Walsh, the then chief executive of International Airlines Group, which owns British Airways. The company had just announced huge job losses—roughly 12,000 from a workforce of 42,000 were to be cut, while the reward, if that word can be used, for those who attempted to remain was a threat that they would be fired and rehired on reduced terms and conditions. For some, the reductions in net take-home pay were simply savage, with cuts of 40%, 50% or 60% not uncommon.

The workforce were understandably traumatised. I received hundreds upon hundreds of emails from British Airways staff. I spoke to cabin crew in tears at the treatment meted out by Mr Walsh and his willing deputy, Mr Cruz, and other BA management. It seems that Mr Walsh tried to make some of these changes a decade or so previously but failed; the pandemic has seemingly given him perfect cover to try again. I could not believe that that was legal. Perhaps naively, I thought that a contract and the law governing it would offer an employee and employer equal protection. Of course, we now see that there is no equality of arms whatsoever.

Following Mr Walsh’s appearance before the Committee, which it would be fair to say was not overflowing with modesty or contrition, further examples of firing and rehiring being deployed against thousands of workers came to light. That should not have come as a surprise to the Government. We and many other Members across the House had warned that without Government action other companies would follow in BA’s footsteps. Centrica British Gas has threatened over 20,000 employees with termination if they do not sign up to new, inferior contracts. Menzies Aviation, a ground handler at many UK airports, including Glasgow, assured me personally that it would not follow the British Airways lead but then copied and pasted its tactics for its own use. Heathrow, which other Members might touch on, is doing the same to its workforce. Unsurprisingly, many have voted for industrial action.

We should be crystal clear about what is happening and has happened. It is reprehensible to treat workers like this. It is counter-productive, self-destructive and flies in the face of what we in society should be willing to accept. In the words of a former Conservative Member, it is the “unacceptable face of capitalism.” Tory Ministers, including the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, have been queueing up to slate firing and rehiring, not least the Minister himself, who said last week:

“The very threat of fire and rehire is totally unacceptable”.—[Official Report, 10 November 2020; Vol. 683, c. 718.]

He slightly blotted his copybook just two minutes later, when he seemed to boast about the UK’s flexible labour markets and how easy it is to hire and indeed to fire workers. On that latter comment, I hope that he misspoke or that that was not what he intended, but that is how it came across to many people. The Minister and I met to discuss my fire and rehire Bill, which would outlaw the practice. He said that while the Government could not support the Bill he remained open to looking at further protections for workers in this area. Perhaps the change in management at No. 10 will allow a new and more collegiate approach on this issue. I know that it is a policy that many of the Minister’s colleagues are not pleased with. When he responds, will he say that he will work with me to strengthen workers’ protections in this area – perhaps in the Government’s Employment Bill? If he wishes to confirm it now, I would be happy to take an intervention, but if he will do so in his summing-up that would be good.

No one denies the unprecedented challenges facing business across the country. Aviation in particular has seen its business model receive its biggest shock since the war. There will be a debate on the issue tomorrow, so I will not go into detail, but as an example, Glasgow airport in my constituency has seen passenger numbers drop year on year by 83%, while some regional airports in England have seen drops of more than 90%. No serious person can argue that this is not a huge hit to an industry that has secured hundreds of thousands of jobs around these isles. The way to meet those challenges is by acting responsibly and being open with staff and trade unions about what the future might hold. In recent months, I have spoken to dozens of union reps, mostly from aviation but many from other industries too, and it is crystal clear that they recognise the position their employers are in. They know that change has to be on the table if their industry is to have a sustainable future. They are not reactionaries who want business and commerce preserved in aspic. They want their members and workers to be treated with respect, dignity and as partners as management come up with plans for the months and years ahead. A temporary problem, albeit for a more prolonged period than we would like, requires temporary solutions. Other airlines have managed to make such agreements with their work force. Threatening staff with the sack is not respectful, is undignified and is certainly not partnership.

I know that many Government Members—perhaps not the Minister—do not like to do so, but we should look at Europe. Partnership working is the norm, not the exception. The idea of management and workers coming together to plan a way forward, with the former working with rather than against the latter, is not some kind of socialist utopia. It is the stuff of advanced economies right across the continent—economies that are in most cases more advanced, wealthier and fairer than ours. That is not a coincidence. There is cross-party support for banning firing and rehiring. Members from every party in the House co-sponsored my Bill and I know that many Government Members are quietly supportive of the principles of the Bill.

Moving on from firing and rehiring, I welcomed furlough when the Chancellor announced it in March and I welcome its extension until next March, although the way in which that extension was announced and the way in which repeated calls for extension were flat-out ignored until the last minute—in fact, after the last minute—were sadly typical of the way the UK Government have handled employment and the economy over the past months. The U-turn has come far too late for thousands of workers made redundant after months of delays and uncertainty. Many good businesses have gone under and millions have been excluded completely. It is clearly still a system with many flaws, not least of which is the power it gives employers over workers, especially when those workers are worried for their jobs and livelihoods.

There is no appeal. An employee is entirely at the mercy and discretion of their employer as to whether to go on furlough or not. That is a lopsided arrangement. An employer can simply say that it is not worth the paperwork, terminate a worker’s contract and leave them to the pittance provided by the benefits system rather than furlough at 80%. The employee has zero rights under law to challenge, appeal or ask a third party to intervene.

Similarly, as we have seen in my constituency, where over 70 people have received no furlough payments due to flaws in the application process, there is no appeal to HMRC for any discretion. Over 70 households, instead of having access to furlough over the past eight months, have had to resort to food banks and the kindness of neighbours to get by, all because their employer was bought over and the change was not recorded by HMRC until one day after an entirely arbitrary furlough deadline was imposed retrospectively.

Returning to the aviation and travel sector and permanent part-year contracts that contain a provision to extend hours through the winter, I have been made aware that TUI is refusing to claim furlough payments for more than 500 permanent part-year employees on the basis that they are not extending the contracts this year due to lack of demand. However, the scheme has provision to claim for such employees, based on the amount earned in the same month last year or an average of monthly earnings for the tax year 2019-20. I hope that the Minister will join me in asking TUI and anyone else planning something similar to think again and to do the right thing. No one is asking for the furlough scheme to be a free-for-all, but it cannot be beyond the wit and imagination of the Treasury to come up with a system that gives some rights and power to the employee, rather than putting every single furlough egg in the employer’s basket and leaving workers with no recourse except to beg their bosses for some relief.

I welcome the Government’s introduction of bereavement leave for the parents of a deceased child. It is a decent and humane policy, and it deserves recognition. Now it is time to look at bereavement leave across the board and to give workers a right to paid time off at a time of grief and personal loss. That seems particularly pertinent when many have unfortunately lost a loved one to covid-19. It is a policy that would undoubtedly cost in the short term but could very well save money. Sue Ryder states that losing someone can have serious consequences not only for mental and physical health; it also costs the UK economy an estimated £23 billion a year due to presenteeism, absenteeism and reduced employment.

We have a situation whereby the UK’s sick pay system is, by a long way, the worst in western Europe. It is a system that has been shameful for years but is now being exposed as completely out of step with every single one of our neighbours and allies in Europe. Two years ago, the Council of Europe’s European Committee of Social Rights called the UK’s SSP system “manifestly inadequate”. In a sane world, that should have set off some kind of alarm in Whitehall, but here we are in the middle of a pandemic, asking people to self-isolate for the greater good yet providing a system of support that is manifestly inadequate.

Our nearest neighbours recognised the scale of the challenge right at the beginning of the pandemic. Ireland’s enhanced illness payment provides €350 a week to anyone who tests positive or has to self-isolate. Up to 10 weeks of payments can be made to people who have tested positive. It has ensured high compliance with self-isolation and helped provide some financial security for households who would receive a pittance if they lived in the UK.

There is no practical reason why the UK is so far behind our nearest neighbours; it is simply a matter of political choice and ideology. I know the Chancellor and his social media team are busy building the Rishi brand, and he would like to paint a picture of himself as the saviour of the economy, right down to delivering discounted katsu curries to diners’ tables. However, his signature is strangely are missing from a pledge to keep sick pay the lowest in Europe. His lack of photo ops to promote the UK’s position near the bottom of the league table perhaps says a lot about how well such boasts would go down with voters.

Citizens Advice tells me that the current employment rights enforcement system is not up to task for dealing with the challenges exposed by the pandemic. Employees who have been unfairly treated have very few options for redress. For many people affected by the redundancy crisis, employment tribunals are the only place they can turn to in order to protect their rights and seek a fair outcome. There are currently six bodies that enforce employment rights in various ways: Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority, the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate, the Health and Safety Executive, local authorities and the Equality and Human Rights Commission. The situation is messy and piecemeal. Along with Citizens Advice Scotland and others, I welcome the proposal to set up a single enforcement body for employment rights. Can the Minister tell us when it will finally be introduced? Will it be included in the Employment Bill, and can he give us a timescale for that Bill?

My final point is brief and to the point. Surely the most basic of employment rights ought to be receiving a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work. The UK Government’s national minimum wage, or the so-called living wage, is not a real living wage; it does not meet the minimum income needed for an acceptable living standard. The different rates of the living wage for young people are wholly unjust and discriminatory, and they do not take account of young people’s needs, responsibilities and living costs. The Chancellor could and should do what is right by increasing the statutory minimum wage and ending the age discrimination within it.

Rebuilding the economy after covid will become the biggest challenge that our society faces once the virus is under control. Workers must be part of that rebuilding and not treated as serfs. They and their families should not be threatened with financial disaster if they do not accept attacks on their pay and conditions. Enhanced employment rights are not just the right thing to do morally; they are the right thing to do economically. They ensure that workers have greater security, and therefore encourage spending within the economy, providing vital income and custom for our retail and service sectors.

The impact of covid has highlighted the fragility of many people’s working conditions—the fact that their family’s future hangs by a thread, which can be cut at a moment’s notice whenever management decides. That has to stop, and a much more equitable balance between employer and employee must be found as soon as possible, for the good of everyone on these islands.

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I thank the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) for securing this debate. I should first declare an interest. Many Members will know by now that I am a lifelong trade unionist and former regional secretary of Unite the Union. My experience in the labour movement spurred me to stand for Parliament, so I warmly welcome the opportunity to contribute to this important debate.

The British public have been asked to make enormous sacrifices to win the war on covid-19. Livelihoods have been lost, businesses forced to close and families separated. At the same time, people have come together in a newly found spirit of solidarity and community-mindedness. Across my constituency of Birkenhead, people have given up valuable time to produce and distribute personal protective equipment, deliver food parcels and look after the most vulnerable and isolated. They understand that we are all in this together but, for some, that message has fallen on deaf ears. Instead of playing their part, several large companies have cynically exploited the public health crisis to slash pay and attack working conditions. Despite receiving millions in taxpayers’ money, companies such as British Airways and Sainsbury’s continue to lay off vast swathes of their workforce. Such attacks have shone a spotlight on the many limitations placed on trade unions to hamper their ability to act in support of their members.

Employment rights in the UK are among the worst in western Europe. Our employment laws are the most draconian of any western democracy with the exception of the United States. Over the past 40 years, successive Conservative Governments have introduced restrictions on the right to strike, to picket, to belong to a trade union, to access industrial tribunals, and more besides. Each piece of legislation has eroded the ability of the unions to act effectively. As the Trades Union Congress has highlighted, the Trade Union Act 2016 represented the most serious attack on the rights of trade unions and their members in a generation, yet the crisis has shown how vital it is to have a strong labour movement. With unemployment spiralling out of control and covid-19 hitting frontline workers hardest, trade unions have leapt to the defence of their members.

Thank you for calling me to speak in this debate, Sir Christopher. I also thank the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands), my colleague on the Transport Committee, for securing this important debate. It would be remiss of me not to remark on the fact that this is a well-attended debate with representatives from all political parties, apart from the Government party—apart from the Minister, who has to be here. I do not know whether that is a reflection of the importance that the governing party attach to employment rights, but it is a sad indictment.

I declare an interest. I have been a member of a trade union and the Labour party all my adult life, and I have the honour of chairing the Unite parliamentary group. I want to highlight cases of dreadful practices, but I also want to pay tribute to the thousands of employers who have gone out of their way to protect and reassure their employees at a time when they themselves often face unparalleled pressures, stress and uncertainty. However, it is regrettable that some rogue employers have sought to use the covid-19 crisis as an opportunity to force workers to sign up to wage cuts in inferior conditions under the threat of dismissal. While the practice of fire and rehire is not currently unlawful in and as itself, the way in which it seeks to capitalise on people’s vulnerability, particularly at this time during the pandemic, is, in my opinion and in the opinion of most reasonable people, morally despicable and indefensible and cannot go unchallenged. It is noteworthy that these actions are outlawed in most other European countries. My belief, shared by many others, is that that should be the case here, too. I will return at the end of my speech to the Minister’s remarks in our previous debate, as referred to by the sponsor of the motion, the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North.

I pay tribute to the excellent work of my union Unite in successfully arguing and mitigating many cases of employers attempting to utilise this terrible practice of fire and rehire. However, it has not always been possible to reach agreement, as was the case with the British Airways cargo workers based at Heathrow airport, where more than 850 Unite members have balloted and are set to strike in December over pay cuts of between 20% and 25% and threats to outsource the workforce.

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I congratulate the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) on securing this important debate.

We live in extraordinary times under coronavirus. It has had a huge impact on all of us, and on our businesses and communities. Although we are talking about employment rights, I recognise that it has had a huge impact on businesses, and I have been working with them, doing what I can to support them through this time. However, some have been less than scrupulous.

Too many working people have seen the very real impact that the pandemic and the measures taken to combat the spread of the virus have had on their work, in many different ways. Like so many other hon. Members, my caseload has increased hugely as workers and their family members contact me to seek advice and guidance on the Government’s measures, their employment situation and the effect on their family income.

The furlough scheme has helped, and I was glad to see the most recent announcements. However, for those on the lowest wages, the national minimum wage—who will get 80% of what we already consider to be the barest minimum that they should be paid and can live on—losing 20% of their income is no mean challenge. There is no reduction in their bills, housing costs and other expenses, so this is a real problem for them. Sometimes we underestimate the way in which so many people are living on the edge. They need all the money that they have to survive and do not have easy access to credit or to help from other sources.

I also want to mention those who do not even qualify for furlough or other payments—those who have fallen through the many cracks in the system, some of which we have already heard about. They may have changed jobs recently, may not have made it on to the HMRC records in time, or they may be self-employed. Speaking to these people in my constituency, I know of the devastation that they have felt—the excluded and the forgotten—as their income disappears and they discover the harsh reality of the universal credit system, although many do not even qualify for that.

Before I call the next speaker, can I say that we will have the winding-up speeches at half-past 10? If each speaker takes four minutes, there will not be time for the last one.

Thank you, Sir Christopher, for that warning. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) on securing this important debate.

The unprecedented economic impact of the coronavirus has laid bare the weaknesses of UK labour protections. During the crisis, workers’ rights and public health must be prioritised above all else. Yet the Government have allowed corporate giants, including those in receipt of taxpayer bailout funds, to use the pandemic as a cover for further exploiting their workforce.

Nowhere has this been more apparent than in Leicester. The severe exploitation in sections of our garment industry in Leicester have been laid bare and highlighted by a huge increase in casework received by me, a resurgence of reports, and the coronavirus. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs reported that, over a six-year period, one quarter of all UK textile factories caught failing to pay the minimum wage were based in Leicester. With some textile factories offering less than £3.50 an hour, workers are forced to endure horrific and unsafe conditions. That is particularly shocking, but Leicester’s garment industry is indicative of the abrupt decline in workers’ rights and living standards since the neoliberal deindustrialisation revolution of the 1980s. The result has been the biggest squeeze on wages since the early 1800s, with pay for the average worker still lower in real terms than a decade ago. In the fifth richest economy in the world, 14 million people are living in poverty, 9 million of whom live in households with at least one person in work. Our workers need a radically fairer offer, which means raising the minimum wage to at least £10 an hour, and investing in our communities and infrastructure to aid the necessary transition to a green economy.

Trade unions are the best line of defence against workplace exploitation. I pay tribute to all trade unions, including my own, Unite, and others, including PCS, GMB and Unison, to name but a few. Yet the collective ability of workers to organise has been systematically eroded by decades of anti-trade union legislation. The latest Global Rights Index from the International Trade Union Confederation placed the UK among the worst violators of trade union rights in Europe. Forty years ago, eight in 10 workers enjoyed terms and conditions negotiated by a trade union. Today, fewer than one in four workers has that benefit. The Trade Union Act 2016 must be repealed. Trade union autonomy and sectoral collective bargaining must be restored, and the right to take industrial action, in accordance with international law, must be re-established.

Because I am keen that everybody on the list should be called, I will now impose a three-minute limit. I am afraid that the self-discipline I had hoped for has not materialised so far.

Thank you, Sir Christopher. As Liberal Democrat spokesperson for equalities, I want to limit my remarks to disability employment and covid.

This debate is very timely. Last week marked the 25th anniversary of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. That landmark piece of legislation established for the first time the civil rights of disabled people in the UK, including in employment. We have made some progress since then. The disability employment gap has decreased steadily over the years, falling from 33% in 2013 to 28% in 2020 but that, of course, is not good enough, and the pandemic puts us at risk of going backwards on that trend.

New research shows that disabled people are now facing profound harms to their financial security and job prospects: 71% of disabled people who were working in March have been furloughed or had their work hours reduced. There are clear signs that this pandemic has had had a disproportionate impact on the lives of disabled people. Many of them are clinically more vulnerable to the virus itself. Recent research from the charity Leonard Cheshire suggests that covid-19 has also exacerbated employers’ negative attitude towards disabled people. That is a worrying trend. Just 33% of employers recorded that they employed a disabled person on their staff in 2020, compared with 49% in 2018; 42% of employers reported that they were discouraged from hiring disabled people because they were concerned about needing to support them, especially during the pandemic. One fifth of employers admitted that they were less likely to employ someone with a disability.

Without Government action, there is a real risk that the pandemic will throw away the UK’s progress towards equality in the workplace. A national strategy for disabled people is needed, and I hope that that will be a top priority. It is vital that such a strategy provides a clear plan for addressing the inequalities that have widened as a result of the pandemic, not least in employment.

I put on record my interest as a member of Unite and GMB. Work is so gendered, which was brought into the spotlight in May when PwC highlighted that 78% of those who had already lost their jobs due to covid were women. Today, I want to focus my remarks on the impact of covid on women at work.

We know that inequality grows, particularly for working-class women. Think about the fact that only 9% of working-class women are able to work at home, compared with 44% of professional women. We know that women are also exposed to extraordinary risks in the light of their duties and their work. More women, particularly working-class women, have had their hours reduced. In June, that reached 52% of all women. Research showed that working-class women had double the reduction in hours of professional women.

Although the virus is gendered in so many ways, it is in particular weighted against women in the workplace. We know that improvements in employment rights would improve opportunity, in particular around absence payments. Statutory sick pay is a massive issue; the fact that we do not have proper statutory sick pay has a huge impact. We also know that women carry the vast majority of caring responsibilities for children and parents, and therefore need additional support. I am, therefore, supporting campaign group Pregnant Then Screwed’s call for a parent isolation grant. We know that working parents are having to take time off for childcare and, as a result, in many cases they do not get any income at all, taking unpaid leave. A grant would be a real game changer in ensuring that women are not further discriminated against and further disadvantaged in the workplace. It would work simply for the periods that parents are having to look after an isolating child, with them being remunerated for that.

I want to highlight the plight of pregnant women. Again, we know that their rights have been curtailed, particularly in the light of increased risk for women in the third trimester of their pregnancy. Yesterday in the Chamber, we heard the difficulties of that. I ask that the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 be fully extended and provision be put in place to ensure that women in their third trimester can get full payment at home and that that should not trigger their parental leave. Finally, I want to put on record the Pregnancy and Maternity (Redundancy Protection) Bill introduced by the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller); it is vital to support women in the workplace during this time, in the light of the redundancies they have experienced.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher, and also to follow the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell). I thank the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) for securing this important debate. One of the commonest ideas expressed in this crisis is that the world, the economy and our day-to-day lives are going to be different when it is over. One of the things, it seems to me, that many of us here are increasingly concerned about is the impact it will have on employment rights, which people fought for bitterly for the best part of a century. Those rights were hard won and then fiercely defended, but now they are in danger of slipping from what seemed a firm grasp but is becoming looser.

No one can deny the unexpected shock felt by our economy and the impact that covid-19 has had on many sectors, specifically, as the hon. Member said, on the airlines and the air sector in general. As the Member for Edinburgh West, I have also experienced at first hand the trauma of the many employees of Edinburgh airport, connected businesses such as Menzies Aviation and specifically British Airways. Many of BA’s employees, who are constituents, have phoned me just looking for some explanation, help and support for the trauma that they are going through as a result of what some euphemistically call “adjusted contracts” and what elsewhere has been branded, quite justifiably, “fire and rehire”.

However, it is not just British Airways that has used this crisis and used redundancy to make a mockery of the terms and conditions of staff. I have had constituents who were working from home and were then forced to take annual leave because their employers’ IT was not working. I have had people whose jobs disappeared because the company was bought and there was no mention of being TUPE-ed. There is also one section of society that we are forgetting and that is the massive gig economy and the self-employed, who have been completely excluded for 10 months from any support. That is why, as the Liberal Democrat economy spokesperson, I want to see furlough extended not to March but to June next year, until we have, by all predictions, a vaccine and we may be able to resume some sort of normalcy and people’s jobs will be protected.

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Christopher. A lot of people are self-isolating at the moment; that number could be higher if test and trace worked properly, but we still have hundreds of thousands of people who cannot attend work for two weeks, as the law requires them to isolate. However, they are doing so without any protection from detrimental treatment by their employer, which could be refusal to pay sick pay to which they are entitled, or even dismissal.

I have also heard concerns from constituents that a period of self-isolation could be used to trigger a sickness absence review, or be used as part of a process that is already under way. It is quite possible that if other members of the same household get symptoms or test positive, people might have to self-isolate on multiple occasions. I am sure we can all understand the genuine anxieties people might feel if they have to tell their employer that they are having to self-isolate for a second or third time, so why are there no workplace protections to support them in doing the right thing? The Government could state very clearly, either through guidance or regulation, that a period of self-isolation should be classed as other leave that cannot be called unauthorised leave, sickness absence or annual leave, and cannot be used as part of any disciplinary or capability process. I think that is a very simple ask of the Government.

Fire and rehire is not a new development—it has been around for as long as people have had jobs—but just because it has happened for a long time does not make it acceptable. In fact, it shows that our employment protections are as antiquated as they are inadequate. The current crisis has shone a light on the absolute imbalance of power in the employment relationship, and the way in which so many people feel exposed to the whims of their employer. That powerlessness does not just manifest itself in people losing their jobs: look at everyone on zero-hours contracts, in the gig economy or in agency work. They are literally at the company’s beck and call, so insecurity is baked into the workplace. It is little wonder so many people have a sense of helplessness, but it does not have to be this way. Job security does not have to be an impossible dream, and the first step to understanding that is looking at why rights are so weak, and often illusionary.