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Levelling up at work - fixing work to level up across the UK

Report type
Research and reports
Issue date
Strengthening the floor of employment protection for all workers

Employment rights

We need to reform the way the economy works so that economic growth translates into decent work that will level up people’s lives and the communities where they live. And we need the government to lead by example by showcasing good employment practices in its role as an employer and implementing procurement policies that ensure that government spending supports good quality employment.

But tackling low pay and insecurity also requires strengthening the floor of employment protection for all workers to make the worst forms of exploitation illegal, raise the wages of the lowest paid and tackle structural discrimination at work. Many of the largest employers in every region are sectors and occupations – such as retail and care - where poor pay and insecurity are common. Improving rights nationally for these groups would make a significant difference to the chances of decent work across the country.

As set out above, for millions of people, their experience of work is of low pay, insecurity and oppressive forms of management. The coronavirus pandemic highlighted the importance to society of so many key workers from care workers to delivery drivers and shop assistants - yet many remain on insecure contracts and low pay, unsure if they can pay bills and put food on the table. Indeed, TUC analysis shows that one in three key workers earn less than £10 an hour.

We need to raise the minimum wage so that work provides a route out of poverty, rather than trapping low-paid workers within it.

Strengthened employment rights are essential to address insecurity and redress the imbalance of power in workplace. The government has promised to “protect and enhance” employment rights. But it has done little to deliver on this. An employment bill announced in December 2019 has yet to be published and has indeed disappeared from the government’s immediate Parliamentary agenda. It remains unclear whether it will ever see the light of day.

Below are five key measures we need to strengthen people’s rights at work.

·       Ban zero hours contracts. This can be achieved by giving workers the right to a shift that reflects their normal hours of work, coupled with robust rules on notice of shifts and compensation for cancelled shifts.

·       All workers including agency workers, zero hours contract workers and casual workers, should be entitled to the same floor of rights currently enjoyed by employees. A new ‘worker’ definition should be devised that covers all existing employees and workers, including zero-hours contract workers, agency workers and dependent contractors. The definition should extend to individuals who are employed via an agency or a personal service company. Those covered by new ‘worker’ status should benefit from the full range of statutory rights. Care needs to be taken when devising new statutory definitions to ensure that working people are not disadvantaged, that those in need of protection are covered, and that a new test is resilient and will accommodate future developments in the labour market.

·       Allow workers to bring a claim for unpaid wages, holiday pay and sick pay against any contractor in the supply chain above them. The TUC wants joint liability laws extended so that workers can bring a claim for unpaid wages and holiday pay against any contractor in the supply chain above them. This would be similar to countries like Australia where Fair Work laws extend liability to franchisors like McDonalds.

·       We need an outright ban on umbrella companies by requiring employment agencies to pay and employ the staff they place with clients.

·       Levelling up requires decent wages. We need a minimum wage of at least £10 an hour now to put more  money into workers’ pockets and address in-work poverty. Wage growth for low-paid workers will contribute to economic recovery by boosting demand and consumer confidence. In the long-term, workers of all ages should receive the standard rate of the minimum wage. All workers, including young workers, should be eligible for the national living wage.

Tackling systemic inequalities

As set out above, the pandemic has highlighted the scale of the structural inequality we face and deepened it in many areas. It has made the case for change stronger than ever. In order to build back better, we need to build back fairer. Equality must be at the heart of any roadmap for levelling up.

Measures to tackle insecure work and low pay, as set out above, will help women, BME workers and disabled workers, who are trapped in disproportionate numbers in these jobs through structural inequality. In addition, we need action to address the discrimination that lies at the heart of structural inequality.

Across all protected characteristics equality groups, action is needed from employers to establish robust workforce monitoring systems that as a minimum cover recruitment, retention, promotion, access to training, performance management and disciplinary actions including dismissal, and then evaluate and publish this monitoring data alongside an action plan to tackle any areas of disproportionate under or overrepresentation.

But wider systemic issues also need to be resolved, which cannot be driven by individual employers alone. Clear leadership is needed from government. The coronavirus crisis, with its disproportionate death rates of BME and disabled people, must be a turning point in government willingness to address systemic social and economic inequalities, including at work. We need urgent and sustained action on the areas set out below.

Cross-departmental action plans

·       The government should create and publish a cross-departmental action plan, with clear targets and a timetable for delivery, setting out the steps that it will take to tackle the entrenched disadvantage and discrimination faced by BME people, with regular updates published and reported to parliament.

·       The government’s vision for disability equality should be built around the social model of disability and developed with the full involvement of disabled people. It should move away from the voluntarism of Disability Confident, to an approach based on mandatory requirements.

·       The Government Equalities Office should review and where necessary redraft the gender equality roadmap to reflect the current context and challenges working mums face, including a clear timetable for acting on the findings.

Strengthened pay gap reporting

·       The government should strengthen the gender pay gap reporting requirements, and introduce ethnic and disability pay gap reporting.

·       Pay gap reporting measures should require employers to publish actions plans on what they are doing to close the pay gaps they have reported.

·       Action plans should cover recruitment, retention, promotion, pay and grading, access to training, performance management and discipline and grievance procedures relating to staff and applicants. It is vital that intersectional issues – for example, those affecting disabled women – are acknowledged and addressed.

Ensure compliance with equality legislation

·       The government must comply with its existing public sector equality duty (PSED) and proactively consider equality impacts at each stage of any policy-making process with a view to promoting equality and eliminating discrimination. Doing this retrospectively, to assess the extent of damage that has been done or provide justification for a particular approach, is not acceptable. Equality impact assessments, although not a specific requirement, are tangible evidence of meaningful engagement with the PSED and as such should be published and impacts monitored on an ongoing basis.

Strengthen parental rights and flexible working

The government must help working families balance paid work and childcare, by reforming the system of parental leave and access to flexible working. This must include:

·       Ten days' paid carers’ leave, from day one in a job, for all parents. Currently parents have no statutory right to paid leave to look after their children and current proposals for unpaid leave will make taking leave unaffordable for many families.

·       Reform of parental leave to include an individual, non-transferable right for each parent on a ‘use it or lose it’ basis.

·       Invest in childcare to ensure that good quality, affordable childcare is available to working parents and help the sector recover from the impact of the pandemic.

·       Making flexible working[1] the default for all workers, through a legal duty on employers to publish in job advertisements which flexible working arrangements are available in a role and a day one right to request flexible working for all workers. Workers should have a right to appeal and no restrictions on the number of flexible working requests made. If an employer does not think that any flexible working arrangements are possible, they should be required to set out the exceptional circumstances that justify this decision.

Properly resource the equality regulator

·       The Equality and Human Rights Commission or EHRC should receive additional, ringfenced resources so that they can use their unique enforcement powers as equality regulator to effectively identify and tackle breaches of the Equality Act in the workplace.

·       This must include targeted enforcement of workers’ right to reasonable adjustments and developing practical guidance for employers to increase their understanding and confidence in using the positive action provisions permitted in the Equality Act to address under-representation of disabled people.


[1] Flexible working can take lots of different forms, including having predictable or set hours, working from home, job-sharing, compressed hours and term-time working.

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