‘The new normal’

Insecure work is becoming more and more common in the UK, according to a new TUC analysis published today (February 7), which found that the number of people on contracts that offer no guaranteed hours and few employment rights has skyrocketed by more than a quarter in the last five years.

That brings the total number of insecure workers – defined by the TUC as seasonal, casual, temporary or agency workers, or those on zero-hours contracts as well as low-paid self-employed workers — to an astounding 3m. That’s one in 10 in the UK workforce.

The TUC says that what all these insecure contracts have in common is that they leave working people in the position where their wages can fluctuate without warning; they find it hard to get their basic employment rights respected; they miss out on key protections like sick pay; and they are at the mercy of bosses who can withdraw their hours or even take them off the job with no notice.

Sectors

The situation is more dire in some industries than others, with restaurant and pub waiters making up a fifth of the increase in insecure work since 2011. The number of waiters on insecure contracts has more than doubled over that time, leaving 1 in 4 workers in the sector stuck in insecure work.

Education and social care workers each account for a tenth in the growth of precarious work.

The sector with the greatest proportion of workers who have no job security or rights is, perhaps not surprisingly, arts and entertainment, in which more than half of all workers in the sector – 66 per cent – are insecure.

But there’s much more job insecurity than you’d think in sectors usually associated with better pay and conditions, such as in land transport – which includes taxi, lorry and train drivers – where 35 per cent of the workforce is insecure, or library and museum services, where 17 per cent of the workforce is insecure.

In other words, job insecurity is beginning to spread like a virus, and it’s not stopping anytime soon as Brexit looms.

‘Nightmare’

“One in 10 employees on insecure contracts means one in 10 employees wondering whether they’ll be given enough hours each week to pay their rent, or be able to put food on the table if they fall ill,” Labour’s shadow business secretary Clive Lewis warned.

And TUC Frances O’Grady argued that insecurity at work is becoming “the new normal for too many workers”.

“It’s happening across new and old industries, with workers forced onto shady contracts whether they’re Uber drivers, bar staff or teaching assistants,” she said.

“People need jobs they can live on and build a life around. But if you don’t how much work you will have from one day to the next, making ends meet is a nightmare.

“How is a working parent supposed to plan childcare when they don’t know the hours they’ll be working? And how can it be right that in 2017 workers are at the mercy of bad bosses who can just take away all their hours or throw them off the job with no notice?

“The rules that protect workers need to be dragged into the 21st Century,” O’Grady added, noting that the government’s Taylor review is a prime opportunity to sort this.

“But we also need to get more people into unions,” she went on to say.  “Workers in unionised workplaces are twice as likely to be on a secure contract. So I say to working people: if you’re not in a union, get some mates together and all sign up if you want a better deal at work.”

Brexit worries

Despite prime minister Theresa May’s earlier assurances on workers’ rights derived from the EU, emphasising that all rights would be transposed into UK law post-Brexit, critics have warned that such assurances aren’t without potential loopholes, which could threaten to make job insecurity in the UK even worse.

Unite assistant general secretary Tony Burke explained.

“The government may grandfather all EU workers’ rights across in the Great Repeal Bill but then they can add on what are called ‘sunset clauses’ which means over a certain amount of time these rights can be taken away without having to have a debate in Parliament through statutory instruments,” he said.

“There are enough hard-Brexiteers in the Tory party – like Priti Patel who said she wanted to see 50 per cent of workers’ rights from the EU stripped away – that makes this scenario entirely possible,” he added.

Accountancy firm PwC today (February 7) published the most glowing predictions for a UK economy post-Brexit to date, noting that in the years following 2020, any short-term economic pain from leaving the EU may well have passed. The firm said that by 2050, the UK could be the fastest growing economy in the list of wealthy G7 countries which includes the USA, Canada, France, Germany and others.

But there’s one catch. The accountancy firm said its predictions were based on the fact that the UK had a “flexible economy” – a euphemism for an economy whose labour market is dominated by jobs in which workers have little job security.

In other words, according to the firm, the UK’s economic growth post-Brexit should in part be powered by the very job insecurity that’s already spreading now – which doesn’t bode well for UK workers’ rights.

‘Envy of the world’

Unite assistant general secretary Steve Turner argued that a Brexit that works for everyone must not mean a race to the bottom on workers’ rights.

“The job insecurity that we’ve seen grow under the coalition government threatens to be turbocharged post-Brexit if we aren’t careful,” he said.

“Strengthening UK workers’ rights – with a renewed emphasis on unionised jobs and on sector-level collective bargaining – is a much better, more sustainable way of growing the economy long-term than slashing and burning wages and employment protections.

“Unionised workers have stronger job security and higher wages, which helps power the economy with their consumer spending power,” Turner added.

“Let’s make the UK the envy of the world in the way it treats its workers – the government can make good on this goal by taking immediate steps such as, for example, beefing up enforcement to crack down on bad bosses, supporting trade unions instead of seeing us as the enemy within, and outlawing zero-hours contracts the way New Zealand did last year.”