Why we need new Employment Bill to protect workers’ rights – Rebecca McDonald

The unemployment rate remained stable at five per cent between April to June – and a growing number of jobs brought employment close to pre-pandemic levels as restrictions lifted in July.

Relief at this good news means there is scope to resume previously paused plans; we should start with the Employment Bill. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation is calling for the Employment Bill to 
create new rights to more 
secure work, make flexible working the default, and deliver on the commitment to a well-resourced single enforcement body.

For workers, this will mean knowing your hours in advance so you can plan budgets and family life, not having shifts cancelled at the last minute, genuine flexibility to fit your job around needs and circumstances (such as childcare), and a stronger guarantee of your rights and benefits.

The Bill’s introduction should not be delayed any longer. Here are three reasons why:

First, we should aim higher than a return to the pre-pandemic labour market. The recovery from the last recession was characterised by poor productivity and persistently high in-work poverty.

While many factors contributed, the common use of insecure work trapped many workers in poverty and played a role in limiting productivity growth. Pausing progress on good work risks repeating the same errors, at the expense of those already struggling to stay afloat.

As attention shifts from crisis management to securing a strong economic recovery, there’s a chance to embed greater security for workers into the economy we return to.

Rather than considering reforms once we’ve returned to an economy with the same flaws as before, pressing ahead with the Bill now signals to businesses the changes expected of them and gives them time to build these into their post-pandemic ways of working.

Second, by the time the Bill is implemented, we expect a stronger economy. If tabled this October and debated for 12 to 14 months, the Bill is unlikely to implemented before autumn 2022.

By then, the latest forecasts expect the economy to have returned to, and outgrown, its pre-pandemic size. Unemployment is likely to take longer but is expected to be very close to recovery by the end of 2022.