I remind Members that there have been some changes to normal practices in order to support the new hybrid arrangements. Timings of debates have been amended to allow technical arrangements to be made for the next debate. There will also be suspensions between each debate. I remind Members participating physically and virtually that they must arrive for the start of debates in Westminster Hall. Members are expected to remain for the entire debate.
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We are expecting votes this afternoon, so if there is any Member who needs to leave to vote, could they please indicate now? Thank you very much.
That this House has considered fire and rehire practices.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Murray. This debate has been oversubscribed, which I think says something about the strength of feeling and the level of anger at this appalling practice. I thank all hon. and right hon. Members for taking part today. One cannot help but notice the lack, or rather the complete absence, of Conservative MPs from today’s call list. I do hope this is not a reflection on how seriously the Government take this issue, but I suspect that is the case. Perhaps the Minister can prove me wrong.
I would like to pay tribute to the workers of our country—the women and men who have battled so hard throughout the past 14 months to keep the country going in the face of covid-19. Many workers have lost friends, colleagues and family members to this terrible virus, and now at least one in 10 of them face a further pandemic of opportunistic employers using covid-19 as a cover to dramatically reduce workers’ pay and terms and conditions. Fire and rehire is a process that involves sacking workers and hiring them back on lower wages and worse terms and conditions—a practice that, according to research published earlier this year by the TUC, has had a disproportionate impact on black, Asian and ethnic minority workers, young workers and working-class people.
However, fire and rehire is not new. In 2009, the Confederation of British Industry boasted of using the financial crash to establish a so-called flexiforce, in effect using economic uncertainty as a cover to replace permanent workers with flexible workers. The economic uncertainty stemming from the pandemic has provided another opportunity for big business to shift power even further away from workers so that they can boost long-term profits for shareholders. These are some of the same companies that have made use of public money through the Government’s job retention scheme.
This debate is very over-subscribed, so I suggest that the first speaker takes four minutes and the rest take three minutes. If that is the case, everybody should be able to get in.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Murray. It is important to recognise the situation facing the ordinary workers in this country who are facing these draconian fire and rehire measures. I congratulate my hon. Friend—my great friend—the Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) on bringing this debate to Westminster Hall today. It is the working people who have kept our country on its feet. They are the true heroes in every sense of the word. It is the keyworkers, mainly low-paid workers, not the hedge fund managers, Government cronies or indeed the highly paid, who are being subjected to what the Minister quite rightly framed as “bullyboy tactics”.
Security of employment is so important to hard-working individuals and their families. Is it not right that ordinary people are treated with absolute dignity and fairness, not as inconvenient necessities by fat cat millionaires who frankly would sell their own grandmothers for a pound?
The scourge of fire and rehire practices, which have always haunted workforces, has expanded rapidly since the beginning of the pandemic. The Prime Minister himself stated that it was capitalism and greed that got us through this covid pandemic. My message to the Prime Minister is that it was the workforce of this country that got us to where we are today, and the reward for many of them is fire and rehire. These are human beings. They are real people, with mortgages, rent payments, credit cards and credit, with kids and families, with expectations and with ambitions, who have been treated appallingly by employers who care little and a Government that talk the talk but fail to walk the walk. As my hon. Friend said in her opening speech, whether it be Goodlord, where salaries are being slashed by up to £6,000, whether it be Go North West where salaries are being slashed by up to £2,500, Jacobs Douwe Egberts with £7,000 a year lopped off salaries, or Melrose Brush with potentially £15,000 a year slashed off people’s salaries. These are real people. What about the Heathrow worker with 40 years’ service, expected to take a 39.1% pay reduction? The list goes on and on.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mrs Murray. I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) on securing her first Westminster Hall debate on such an important subject and her excellent speech. It is also a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery).
I first raised fire and rehire with the Prime Minister on 16 December 2020 at Prime Minister’s Question Time, after highly skilled engineers at Centrica British Gas were told they had to sign new contracts before Christmas or else they would be fired and rehired in the new year on worse terms. The Prime Minister’s response was deeply concerning:
“it is also vital that we have a flexible economy that is able to generate jobs, particularly when we are going to go through a very difficult and bumpy time.”—[Official Report, 16 December 2020; Vol. 686, c. 272.]
During this “very difficult and bumpy time”, as the Prime Minister put it, is exactly when people need stability and certainty in their lives. Yet according to Unite the Union, one in 10 workers is already threatened with fire and rehire, and many more are likely to face this manipulative process as furlough comes to an end.
Earlier this month, I was saddened to see approximately 350 British Gas engineers lose their jobs because they refused to sign a contract with worse terms and pay. Equally sad is the thousands upon thousands of other GMB members at British Gas signing new but worse contracts under duress. Yet when my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) raised it with the Prime Minister just last week, he was not even aware of the issue. Four months on from my question, hundreds have been sacked and the Prime Minister still does not have an answer.
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Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Murray. George the gas man was a good friend of my dad when I was a kid. I learned through him, and saw subsequently, that gas workers were and are skilled, trusted, doing an essential job, keeping our communities safe. Theirs was historically a good, secure job, not least because of the history of strong trade unionism.
In 1889 Will Thorne founded the National Union of Gas Workers and General Labourers—now the GMB—that fought against the shameful treatment meted out to workers in Victorian times. Generations fought to consign such treatment to history, including my union, Unite, asserting the dignity of labour.
The history of the gas industry is also one of trade unions acting as agents of change, managing sometimes difficult processes of change, seeking negotiated outcomes. Gas workers also fought for their country. The Hollyfields Sports and Conference Centre in my constituency has a barrier on which are written the names of 250 workers who died fighting for their country in the first and second world wars.
In 21st century Britain we see a throwback to Victorian times, to the kind of treatment meted out to workers that we thought was history. Paul Vowles of the GMB from Birmingham has said of the 350 members who have lost their jobs that,
“They were salt of the earth, doing a good job, now ending up out of work.”
British Gas could have negotiated an outcome. It might have been difficult, but they could have done it. They chose instead to use fire and rehire, like too many employers in the current climate. The TUC estimates that one in 10 workers have suffered from such treatment or the threat of it. Even worse, some of the employers benefiting from Government support through the covid crisis are the same employers taking advantage of fire and rehire, which is utterly contemptible.
It is clear that the GMB and Unite stand ready to negotiate a solution but the company is not interested. We have to bring home the human consequences. Chris O’Shea, the chief executive, says,
“You’ve got a duty to make your colleagues’ lives as easy as possible.”
Tell that to the single mum who complains of chest pains and says,
“It makes me feel sick that I am nothing more than something on the bottom of Chris O’Shea’s expensive shoes.”
Tell that to the gas worker who every single day during lockdown worked for the Trussell Trust, delivering to the elderly and vulnerable.
It is a pleasure to see you in the chair, Mrs Murray. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) for securing this debate. Fire and rehire is the latest in a long line of tools used by the Tories and bullying bosses to drive down pay and conditions of workers. It is a form of legalised robbery. The same work—sometimes more—is expected to be done but for less pay. The aim is simple: to transfer wealth from wages to profits. How do they hope to get away with that? By exploiting workers’ insecurity at a time of crisis. When we should be building a fairer society out of the covid crisis, unscrupulous bosses are being given a green light to intimidate workers into accepting worse pay and conditions.
This is not just about the one in 10 workers threatened so far. Fire and rehire is the new Tory blueprint for the whole economy. It will grow dramatically as furlough ends, unless the law is changed. The aim is to drag down everyone’s terms and conditions, a real race to the bottom. Workers lose out, bosses gain: it is Thatcherism on steroids. Of course, the Prime Minister claims he is against this, but words are cheap; action is what matters. There is not a single Back-Bench Tory MP here for the debate.
The truth is that the Government could ban this disgraceful practice overnight. If the Prime Minister introduced the legislation today, Labour would back it. With the stroke of a pen, the threat would be gone. Other countries have already banned fire and rehire. If only the Tories were as quick in responding to that issue as they are in responding to WhatsApp messages from their corporate sponsors. As a trade union lawyer, before I became a Member of Parliament, I saw the immense suffering of those subjected to fire and rehire, but now it is being carried out on an industrial scale, so the fightback must be on an industrial scale too. I have joined British Gas workers on the GMB picket in Leeds, fighting back against that company’s appalling behaviour; and I commend and congratulate Unite the Union on defending so many workers who have been affected by fire and rehire and on getting that agenda on to the national agenda.
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Murray. I declare an interest as a member of Unite and the GMB, and because a family member was subjected to fire and rehire. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) for securing this hugely important debate, and for her powerful speech.
I want to give my support and solidarity to my constituents and many people across the country who have been subjected to the immoral practice of fire and rehire. We should be in no doubt that it destroys livelihoods, families and communities, and my disdain for companies using that weapon to cause such misery in 2021 during a pandemic knows no bounds. I hope that the public will show solidarity and support for the workers who are affected, by using their consumer choice and power wisely, and that they will show their disdain for any company that chooses that path.
Bad employers, including a number that have made huge profits in the past year, such as British Gas owner Centrica, which posted profits in 2020 of £447 million, have exploited the pandemic to cut the pay and conditions of workers, through fire and rehire. The roll-call of shame is a long one. A few of the worst are British Gas, British Airways, and Go North West, but there are many others—the TUC estimates that one in seven workers in the UK will be under threat from the practice. I have personal experience of the cost, because my brother and many of his colleagues lost their jobs because of their refusal to sign inferior new contracts with British Gas under the terms of fire and rehire. Years of loyalty and skills were cast on to the scrapheap because certain companies wanted to make workers pay for the pandemic, and protect shareholder profits. It is beyond contempt.
The Minister condemned those bully-boy tactics last month; so when will he take action? The Government have sat on the ACAS report on fire and rehire for more than two months now. What does the report say? When will they release it? How will they address the concerns raised by those independent experts? The tactics of fire and rehire are a stain on this country’s reputation, and they harm our communities’ chances of rebuilding back from the pandemic. They are economically illiterate and they destroy relationships between workers and employers, often beyond repair. I urge the Minister to outlaw fire and rehire—to commit to doing that in the Queen’s Speech—and to start to take action against employers that use those practices. Too many livelihoods have already been destroyed, and he must ensure that not one more person endures the pain that many have already been subjected to.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Murray. I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) on securing the debate at a time when the shameful practice of fire and rehire is increasingly weaponised by companies to exploit workers. Fire and rehire should never be acceptable in any circumstances, and I would like to hear the Minister commit to outlawing that anti-worker practice today. It is nothing short of disgraceful that so many companies have been allowed to engage in it in the middle of a global pandemic.
Fire and rehire is not the final option left to the companies in question. They are not struggling to make ends meet. Many continue to pay their chief executive officers six or seven-figure salaries and to fork out massive dividends to their shareholders, while claiming that they cannot afford to pay their staff a decent day’s wages for a decent day’s work. In the case of British Airways, whose former chief executive officer I had the misfortune to encounter on several occasions during my time on the Transport Committee, it attempted to force fire and rehire down the throats of its staff despite making tens of millions of taxpayers’ money for furloughing its workers, and despite the parent company IAG having made billions in profits the previous financial year. Thanks in large part to the efforts of my union Unite, British Airways was forced to ditch some of its plans to fire and rehire 30,000 of their staff.
British Airways was not, sadly, the only UK major employer whose reputation has now been trashed as a result of the decision to pursue that policy. Last year, British Gas told its shareholders that it would slash 5,000 jobs and committed to forcing the remaining 2,000 to undergo a fire and rehire process before it had engaged with the GMB union. In January, Centrica chief executive Chris O’Shea told the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee that the company had been forced to issue the fire and rehire threat before talks began, by law. In a leaked email that I have here from 22 February, of which I have been made aware, Mr O’Shea informed British Gas’s human resources team it would no longer use fire and rehire as a strategy. He writes in the email that
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Fire and rehire must not be allowed to continue. Workers should not be forced to choose between losing pay or losing their jobs. Parliament must act urgently to outlaw this form of industrial blackmail. That is why I, along with my union Unite, am calling for fire and rehire to be included in next month’s Queen’s Speech, either in the Employment Bill or as stand-alone emergency legislation. It is a national emergency and disgrace that one in 10 workers are currently threatened with a practice that, in the words of the Prime Minister, is “unacceptable” and in the words of the Minister here today is “bully boy tactics.” I am not entirely convinced that the Prime Minister knows what fire and rehire is or what it is doing to thousands of workers across the UK.
Fire and rehire is not a new phenomenon but it has gained prominence because of the conduct of many major employers, such as British Airways, Heathrow airport and British Gas, some in circumstances that they claim to be justified by the covid pandemic. The practice has highlighted how weak the current unfair dismissal laws are in this country and how they need to be strengthened.
I take this opportunity to highlight the example of my constituent Matthew from Hebburn, who is one of many of my constituents who have been affected by fire and rehire. Matthew had worked for British Gas for 16 years. He was an exemplary worker, once proud to drive his blue van, who would have been happy to see out the rest of his working life with the company. He is now newly self-employed, having been one of the 300 to 400 staff who lost their jobs for refusing to sign up to new contracts, terms and conditions imposed by British Gas for nothing more than corporate greed.
Despite making more profit than in the previous year, British Gas has used the pandemic as a cover to impose a “take it or leave it” 15% pay cut and other changes that have affected the time their workforce spend with their families, by making the working week three hours longer. That is a whole month of additional labour added to the year.
Last year British Gas issued Matthew with a fire and rehire ultimatum, giving him and his colleagues a deadline of 23 December. They were told that if they did not agree with the terms offered, worse terms would be forced upon them. This deadline was pushed back until 25 March. Matthew refused to be bullied by British Gas and was therefore given his notice on Monday 29 March. I send solidarity to Matthew and all other workers.
What has happened to loyal workers like Matthew at British Gas is an absolute scandal. It shows utter contempt for the loyalty many have shown for much of their working lives. British Gas, Centrica and their chief executive officer Chris O’Shea should be ashamed of this reckless corporate bullying. It is sad to see what has happened to British Gas, once a nationally respected institution but now a poster boy for the virus of poor employment practice that is spreading like another contagious deadly disease across the UK.
In London, staff at Goodlord were given a choice to take a pay cut or become unemployed. Goodlord asked staff to take a contract with a lower rate of pay, which is below the London living wage.
In Manchester, Go North West drivers have been on an all-out strike for over 50 days against cruel fire and rehire abuses by bosses. The company wants to fire and rehire its drivers and force them to work longer for no additional pay, while also cutting sick pay for drivers with more than five years’ service.
In Loughborough, global field service engineers employed by Brush Electrical Machines, owned by Melrose, are being balloted for strike action in response to fire and rehire pay cuts of up to £15,000. The proposed contracts include reductions to overtime rates, allowances and holidays. The engineers have been threatened with redundancy if they do not sign the new contracts, which will leave them on pay rates well below industry standards.
In Oxfordshire, Jacobs Douwe Egberts will stop workers from taking summer holidays to thwart an overtime ban, starting on 1 May, in an ongoing fire and rehire dispute. My own union Unite is representing its members in all these disputes, but the problem goes much deeper and will only grow if the job retention scheme comes to an end.
Last year, the Government asked the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service to produce a report on the full extent of fire and rehire, which was received by Ministers on 17 February. Despite numerous pledges to release the report and respond to it, the Government are still dragging their feet, leading us to wonder what ACAS has written that the Government do not want us to read.
On 23 March, I asked the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the hon. Member for Derby North (Amanda Solloway), during Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy questions if she could confirm when we would get a chance to see the ACAS report. The Minister told me that the Government find the practice of fire and hire “unacceptable”, but could not give me a date or time when the ACAS report would be released. Here we are, one month later, and the Government are still dragging their feet on this. I hope the Minister will tell us today when the Government intend to make the ACAS report available, because they certainly appear to want to bury it.
We have heard a lot from this Government about levelling up and how Brexit will give us the opportunity to have higher standards across the board. Now is the Government’s chance to prove that they are serious about that. They must understand that well-paid, secure work is good for the economy, and greater security for workers would mean a stronger and quicker recovery. Our friends across Europe understand this. The practice of fire and rehire is already banned in Ireland, Spain and France, and is seen as unacceptable in other competitor economies, where Governments step in to defend their workers. Last week, the Government moved quickly to stop the European super league in its tracks. It showed that they can make things happen when they want to—and feel that they will get a popularity bounce off the back of it.
The Government have made all the right noises about fire and rehire, but so far have done absolutely nothing about it. I hope the Minister will tell us when the Government will back up their words with action and act to outlaw this immoral practice. If this Government are serious about levelling up and raising standards, they must commit to ending fire and rehire once and for all. I hope to see that in next month’s Queen’s Speech, either in the Employment Bill or in stand-alone emergency legislation.
This is legalised robbery; it is legalised theft, with astonishing consequences for those doing the right thing. It is ruthless corporate bullying. It is intimidation. It is harassment of people with families, people with bills to pay. We all agree that this is a time of great uncertainty. Fire and rehire must be outlawed. If it is good enough for Ireland, France and Spain, by goodness it is good enough here in the UK. Where is the much-awaited ACAS report, Minister? Come clean. What are you hiding? Publish it if you can. This is simply unacceptable in modern-day Britain. Coming out of a year-long pandemic, Minister, ensure that the draconian practice of fire and rehire is outlawed in the Queen’s Speech. Fix this now and fix it for good—and for those workers out there, join a union.
It is not just British Gas engineers either; fire and rehire is also used by British Airways in Heathrow, and I am sure my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) will go into further detail on those disputes. Go North West drivers have been on strike for more than 50 days, while Jacobs Douwe Egberts coffee producers is starting an indefinite overtime ban on International Workers Day, 1 May, and engineers at Brush Electrical Machines are balloting for action against pay cuts of up to £15,000.
Fire and rehire is an exploitative and illegitimate negotiation tactic that causes real hurt and anger. Household names have betrayed decades of trust from the nation. These tactics damage not only their workforces but their customer base, who will feel the same way at the disgraceful way those businesses treat their employees. The Government have an opportunity with the upcoming Queen’s Speech to work with Labour and the relevant trade unions such as Unite and the GMB to introduce vital legislation that will ban fire and rehire practices and give workers the stability and assurances that they need at this—again in the Prime Minister’s own words—“very difficult and bumpy time”.
In conclusion, what we thought we had consigned to history now haunts the world of work. I say this to the Minister: warm words have been issued in relation to fire and rehire, but the time has come for the Government to act, including in the Queen’s Speech.
I will end with a message to every worker who has been forced to take action against the disgraceful practice. They have my absolute, unwavering support in standing up to bully boy tactics and the shameful inaction of the Conservative Government.
“I recognise that the use of fire and rehire has led to a lack of trust, and I understand the impact this has had on morale, which is why we pledge never to revisit the use of fire and rehire again.”
If he would never consider fire and rehire again, why did he previously say that it was the only option when appearing before a Select Committee? I am deeply concerned that Mr O’Shea may have misled Parliament in the way that he defended himself, given the subsequent email in which he explicitly states that he would consider another option.
The reality is that Mr O’Shea’s actions mean that people will no longer think of British Gas as a proud British company, and maybe it is time for him to consider his own position. It would certainly be one way of saving the country £775,000. Local authorities have also been caught up in the unsavoury practice, including the Conservative-run Thurrock Council, with changes to terms and conditions that see workers losing over £3,000 a year. Thankfully, an election is coming up next week, so perhaps that will also be consigned to the dustbin of history.