Advice shortfall for vulnerable workers
Advice shortfall for vulnerable workers
Hard pressed employment advisers are struggling to meet the needs of the UK's most vulnerable workers, a TUC report has revealed. The news comes as the government is seeking to reduce safety enforcement cover to many of the sectors identified in the report as particularly badly affected by employment abuses. Researchers from the Centre for Employment Studies Research at Bristol Business School, commissioned by the TUC's Commission on Vulnerable Employment (CoVE), interviewed employment advisers from Citizens Advice (CABx) and the law centres across the UK. The research highlights the extent of the problems that vulnerable workers face, frequently at the hands of 'repeat offenders'. It found 79 per cent of advisers receive reports of unfair dismissal weekly or more frequently. Two-thirds (67 per cent) receive reports of problems with pay weekly or more frequently and 60 per cent deal with problems with working time or contractual rights weekly or more frequently. These problems are concentrated in low paid sectors where most jobs are held by women, the study found, with agency workers also more likely to report problems. Advisers told the researchers that workers experiencing problems were most likely to work in private care homes, hotels and restaurants, hairdressing and beauty, wholesale and retail, or for cleaning companies. A Better Regulation Executive report on health and safety this month, welcomed by business secretary John Hutton, identified a number of these jobs, including the hotel and restaurant and wholesale and retail sectors as 'low risk', and recommended they receive less attention from the Health and Safety Executive (Risks 368).
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