Make Work Pay: Consultation on improving access to flexible working
We welcome the opportunity to submit to this consultation. The TUC and unions have long campaigned for greater access to good quality flexible working. It is vital for achieving gender equality, supporting carers, reducing the disability employment and pay gap, supporting older workers to stay in the workforce for longer and providing everyone with a better work life balance.
Flexible working is any change to when, where and how long people work. It can include compressed hours, flexitime, remote working, part-time work, job-shares and set shift patterns. It is vital that set shift patterns (as opposed to rolling or irregular shift patterns) are recognised as a form of flexible working – for many workers in sectors such as retail, transport and hospitality this is the primary form of flexible working requested and is vital to be able to balance work and life including care.
Flexible working consistently comes up as one of the top issues that union reps deal with in workplaces, with 60 per cent of reps telling the TUC in 2024 that they had dealt with an issue related to flexible working in the last two years 1 . We continue to find that too many flexible working requests are rejected and those who do work flexibly face poor treatment.
The provisions in the Employment Rights Act are welcome, and our response provides a trade union view on how to ensure the duty to consult process is robust, fair and consistent. We also believe that legislative change needs to go further if we are to ensure that flexible working is the default for all workers.
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