The Trades Union Congress has criticised the Conservative party for “a litany of failures on workers’ rights” as it published analysis showing a rise in insecure jobs in the five years since the government pledged to make work in the UK fairer. At least 3.7 million people in Britain are in insecure jobs, up from 3.6m in 2021, out of a total workforce of 34 million, according to analysis of government data by the TUC. That compares to 3.2 million in late 2016, before the publication of the Taylor review, a landmark government-backed report on work in the UK. Frances O’Grady, the TUC’s general secretary, said Boris Johnson’s government appeared “intent on dragging us backwards on rights in the workplace”. Johnson’s eventual acquiescence to a wave of Conservative MPs calling for his resignation as prime minister means he is likely to leave office without bringing in an employment bill first promised when he won a majority in the 2019 general election. The repeated postponement of the bill has come as relations between the government and unions have rapidly deteriorated. The government has said it will change the law to allow companies in effect to break strikes by using agency staff, and Johnson’s emphasis on seeking a “high wage” economy has been replaced with direct criticism of workers asking for higher pay. Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, commissioned a report by Matthew Taylor, a former head of the No 10 policy unit under Tony Blair, to examine how the law could change to ensure “all work is fair and decent”. It followed the rapid rise of new ways of working such as zero-hours contracts and gig economy jobs, in which people work for a company but are counted as self-employed, therefore losing benefits and protections. While unemployment remains historically low, the TUC said there had been increases in insecure work in the last year for people on zero-hours contracts and for agency, casual and seasonal workers. The number of self-employed people earning an hourly rate less than the minimum wage dipped slightly during the year.
Taylor, who was chief executive of the Royal Society of Arts until last year, made a series of recommendations that included giving holiday and sick pay to workers in the gig economy and creating a new status of “dependent contractor” to prevent companies from claiming workers are self-employed. However, O’Grady, who is due to stand down as TUC leader by the end of the year, said that most of the Taylor review’s recommendations had still not been implemented. “This Conservative government promised to make Britain the best place in the world to work. But ministers have torched that promise – first by failing to bring forward an employment bill and now by brazenly attacking workers’ bargaining power and union rights,” she said. “People can’t wait for greater rights and security at work – they need it now, but this government is intent on dragging us backwards on rights in the workplace.”