Better Jobs and a Fair Deal at Work — House of Commons, 2021-05-12
Topic: Labor
Gavin Andrew Stuart Newlands (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): In yesterday’s programme for government, Bills that will make it harder for people to vote, scrap fixed-term Parliaments and reduce judicial oversight of the Government were announced. Yet the Government found no room in their programme for a clear and unequivocal pledge to make fire and rehire illegal, and this at a time when workers’ rights are under attack from some of the biggest businesses in the land. The results will be all too predictable. Continued inaction will inevitably lead to yet more companies telling their staff to accept wage cuts, with no negotiation or discussion, or face the sack Minister after Minister has condemned the practice. The Prime Minister himself said earlier this year that using threats to fire and rehire was unacceptable as a negotiating tactic. Questions from myself and many other Opposition Members have been met with the response that the Government are studying the ACAS report that was delivered to them—a report that has now been sitting on their desks for three months. We do not know what is in the report—the Government have not published it—but I have to ask: what is the point of commissioning ACAS to produce it if nothing is to be done with it Given the indignities that millions of employees have been expected to tolerate over recent months at the hands of unscrupulous and immoral employers, it is shocking that there is no employment Bill or any reference whatever to workers’ rights and dignity, nor any mention of levelling up for those subject to employment practices that are more reminiscent of the Poor Laws than those of a 21st-century society—and this despite the fact that back in November the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), said of the employment Bill that it was a matter of when, not if In recent weeks, as we have heard others mention, hundreds of British Gas workers have lost their jobs because they refused to be fired and rehired. Where is their levelling up? Sites are filled to bursting with British Gas vehicles—van graveyards, deliberately created by the company because no one is left to work in them—with the entirely predictable result that service visits and repairs are hugely behind schedule Last year it was British Airways telling staff to sign on the dotted line or join the dole queue, just weeks into lockdown. In Ireland and Spain, where BA’s parent company also operates, these tactics would be illegal. Workers in those countries were safe from fire and rehire, but in the UK, BA saw no legal obstacle to effectively telling staff, in some cases with decades of service, to take 40%, 50% or 60% wage cuts, or face the sack, all while BA was using money from those same taxpayers to stay afloat Ultimately, the state has a responsibility to ensure that the rights of workers are protected by the force of law against the deep pockets and power of huge corporations. By failing to act yet again, the Government are abandoning that responsibility and instead appear to be content with issuing stern lectures from the Dispatch Box about how naughty these companies are. Lectures do not level up for workers. Lectures do not pay mortgages, they do not pay the bills and they do not protect jobs.