date: Thursday 20 June 2002 embargo: 00:01h Monday 24 June 2002

Attention: industrial correspondents and planning desks

UK near bottom of the league on job security

The UK is bumping along with world cup hosts Japan and Korea at the bottom of the job security league. We come second only to Korea when it comes to job insecurity among major industrialised countries, according to a new TUC report looking at the globalisation debate published ahead of this week’s G8 summit.

Figures from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development show that UK workers are some of the most concerned about their job security but the TUC report says globalisation is not to blame. Instead, the TUC says domestic factors like the economic cycle and the level of employment regulation plays a far greater role in determining job security.

The unique insecurity felt by UK workers is underlined by the UK’s poor performance even after achieving a big increase in job security from the previous survey in 1996 when an astonishing 53% of workers said they were unsure of their job. The change in government and economic success across much of the economy has improved job security, but the high level of perceived insecurity shows that people at work in Britain know they are easier and cheaper to sack than in many competitors. In contrast both Japan and Korea have had severe economic difficulties in recent years.

TUC General Secretary John Monks, said:

'Our report explodes myths about globalisation. One myth is that it makes jobs insecure in developed countries, or that insecurity is a price that must be paid for economic growth. Yet the figures do not bear this out. There are big differences between comparable countries. And this can only be due to differences in employment rights, culture and comparative economic performance. UK workers are more secure than they were in 1996 even though globalisation has increased.'

JOB INSECURITY ACROSS THE OECD in 2000

	Unsure of a job even if they perform well
Korea	46%
UK	41%
Japan	38%
United States	37%
Australia	37%
France	37%
Sweden	36%
Czech Rep	35%
New Zealand	34%
Germany	34%
Italy	32%
Finland	31%
Greece	29%
Spain	27%
Canada	27%
Hungary	26%
Switzerland	26%
Belgium	26%
Austria	23%
Ireland	23%
Netherlands	22%
Denmark	20%
Portugal	21%
Norway	17%
Unweighted average	30%

Note: UK scores in 1996 53 per cent, against an unweighted average of 58 per cent and 5 per cent. Source: International Survey Research, OECD 2001.

Notes to Editors:

All TUC press releases can be found at www.tuc.org.uk

A survey carried out for the OECD in 2000, people were asked whether they were confident about a job with their company even if they perform well. In 2000 the UK did remarkably badly on this measure, topped only by Korea. Dismal as this ranking is, it was better than in 1996 when the UK was the worse performer by a significant margin. There was also significant variation between OECD economies, suggesting national institutional and organisational factors are important. It is certainly difficult to see any systematic link between these measures of job insecurity and exposure to the global economy.

One argument sometimes aired is that greater job insecurity was the price that UK employees have had to pay to remain competitive in a global economy. But the biggest increases in trade have been with the European economies where job protections and collective bargaining have historically been stronger and more extensive than in the UK. Moreover, while job insecurity indicators for manual workers tend to rise and fall in line with the economic cycle, the secular rise in job insecurity in the UK over the past twenty years has come from non-manual workers in service industries, including the public sector. Global economic forces cannot easily be linked to this rise.

Press copies of the TUC report, Globalisation: Myths and realities, are available from the TUC press office and available to order from Cathy Linden 020 7467 1204.

Contacts:

Media enquiries: 020 7467 1248, email media@tuc.org.uk or pager 07699 744115 over the weekend of Sat 22 June or Sun 23 June

Other enquiries: David Coats 020 7467 1205 or email dcoats@tuc.org.uk

Press release (700 words) issued 24 Jun 2002