A briefing for Lords peers scrutinising the Employment Rights Bill
Ahead of the 2nd reading of the Employment Rights Bill in the House of Lords, the High Pay Centre (HPC) published and distributed a briefing to peers in the House of Lords on our analysis of the current state of the Employment Rights Bill. The briefing calls on parliamentarians to support the bill, while making three main recommendations on where the substance of the bill could be strengthened:
- In order to truly deliver ‘fair pay’ the negotiating body that will oversee new ‘Fair Pay Agreements’ that will apply in the social care sector (and potentially other sectors in future) should have a remit to cover excess pay-outs to owners and executives at the top of companies providing social care, as well as under-payment of social care workers in the middle and at the bottom.
- The vital and welcome new requirement for employers to provide workers with a statement of their trade union rights could also cover other key employment rights including rights to the minimum wage, sick pay or consultation rights . Many workers – particularly lower earners lack awareness of their rights at work generally, and ensuring they are informed of key rights when they start a new job would go a long way to ensuring these important rights are actually applied.
- When workers vote to recognise a trade union, this should give the union rights to consultation on major business decisions that would affect their members. This would give people more voice and control over their working lives, and improve a situation whereby the UK ranks 26th out of 28 European countries for worker participation in decision-making at work. HPC’s submission to the consultation on the UK’s Modern Industrial Framework making this argument was endorsed by 12 Professors of Employment Relations from leading UK Universities.
For further detail on the thinking behind some of these recommendations, our recent publication ‘A Charter for Fair Pay‘, sets out a a series of new policies for empowering workers, enabling a more participatory business culture, boosting pay and productivity and reducing income inequality.
Beyond the details of the bill discussed above the debate in the Lords included a proposal from Green Party peer Baroness Jones to introduce a ‘maximum pay ratios’ amendment in line with the Green Party’s long held policy of limiting the pay ratios between executive and worker pay to 10:1. HPC have previously published research looking at the hypothetical impact of capping top pay and redistributing the excess across the wider workforce.