Our new research outlines policies to empower workers, boost productivity, and reduce inequality.
Our ‘Charter for Fair Pay’ sets out a series of new policies for empowering workers, enabling a more participatory business culture, boosting pay and productivity and reducing income inequality
Recommendations include:
- Strengthening proposals in the forthcoming Employment Rights Bill to ensure employers provide workers with information on their workplace rights, and preventing them from manipulating votes on trade union recognition – based on similar proposals put forward in the USA
- Creating seats for worker directors on company boards, in line with rules that exist in most other European countries
- Setting voluntary targets for worker share ownership and profit-sharing schemes, in line with similar targets for gender diversity on boards or pension fund investment in UK growth companies
- Making rules on pay disclosure more consistent, by requiring large private employers to provide greater transparency on the pay of their highest earners, following the model that applies to public sector and voluntary sector employers
The Employment Rights Bill published in Ocotber 2024 is currently undergoing Parliamentary scrutiny, and the Department for Business and Trade Select Committee opened a call for evidence relating to the proposals that runs until December 6.
Further employment policy reforms proposed in Labour’s general election manifesto are to be put to public consultations. A Draft Bill on Audit Reform and Corporate Governance was also proposed in the King’s Speech of July 2024. The High Pay Centre is urging the Government to use these opportunities to empower workers with a stronger bargaining position in pay negotiations and more say in business decision-making.