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Paul Sellers

Paul Sellers

Paul is TUC Policy Officer dealing with working time and the minimum wage. He focuses on combating the long hours culture, campaigning for better laws on working time, and promoting collective bargaining and best practice.

He also focuses on influencing the Low Pay Commission and the Government, and works to promote better awareness and enforcement of the minimum wage.

  • Economics

    May Day 2012

    4th May 2012 — Filed under: Economics, Politics, Society & Welfare

    Paul Sellers Paul Sellers

    The coming May Day bank holiday will be the 34th since it was introduced way back in in 1978. In those far-off days of Government incomes policies, the TUC had a series of meetings with the Government in 1977 to discuss introducing the new bank holiday as part of the quid pro quo (I have the minutes). This followed on our previous success in getting New Years Day established as a bank holiday (1974).

    Let’s get out there and enjoy this holiday, which we richly deserve. Perhaps the weather may not be the best ever, but if we are going to get depressed by the odd shower then we are probably living in the wrong country. There are plenty of things that we could this weekend indoors and outdoors, including visiting a number of local trade union festivals  (this is not just being “worthy”, the one taking place in Dorchester on Sunday afternoon is basically a mini rock festival) – and more traditional May Day events.

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  • Labour market

    Big business still provides most employee jobs

    30th April 2012 — Filed under: Labour market

    Paul Sellers Paul Sellers

    I’ve heard it said twice in the last couple of weeks that small businesses provide most of the jobs in the UK. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is not actually born out by the figures.

    Rumours of the demise of big firms are premature. In fact, 49. per cent of private sector employees still work for large businesses (defined as employing 250 people or more), 15.5 per cent work for medium sizes businesses (50-249 employees) and 34.8,  work for small businesses (1-49 employees).

    Without underplaying the contributions that small enterprises make to the UK economy, it is also a fact that 3.4 million UK businesses are sole traders – eg they consist of 1 self-employed person working alone. Sole traders account for 75.6 of all UK businesses. Most will at best continue to be  “trundlers” rather than taking off in a big way.

    Finally, add the public sector into the equation, and we find that just 8,600 enterprises account for 52.2 per cent of all UK employees.

    Source: http://www.bis.gov.uk/analysis/statistics/business-population-estimates 2011.

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  • Labour market

    Alternatives to redundancy summit 26 April

    17th April 2012 — Filed under: Labour market

    Paul Sellers Paul Sellers

    As with previous recessions, far too many employees are still being made redundant. The latest ONS figures record 612,000 redundancies in the last 12 month period – up 30,000 on the previous year’s figures. 

    The human cost of redundancy for workers is very clear, but do companies really have to engage in a “sack-race” every time the economy slows down? This question will be the topic of the TUC’s Alternatives to Redundancy summit on 26 April.

    Racing to redundancy can cost businesses an awful lot of money. As well as the direct costs of paying off their workers, there are also the indirect costs of the management time spent implimenting the process. Once the redundancies are complete there is inevitable damage to staff morale and productivity in the subsequent period. Finally, when the economy begins to recover, there are the costs of recruitment and training to re-fill the jobs that people had previously been paid to leave the organisation.  

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  • Economics

    House prices continue to fall – but strong growth in London

    23rd March 2012 — Filed under: Economics

    Paul Sellers Paul Sellers

    According to the latest  figures published today by the Land Registry for England and Wales *, house prices across the UK continued to decline in February, down 0.6 per cent on a year earlier, with an average price of £161,588.

    London is very different though. Here, house prices rose by 4.2 per cent in the past year and the average sale price was £354,300 

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  • Economics

    For whom the road tolls?

    21st March 2012 — Filed under: Economics

    Paul Sellers Paul Sellers

    Hidden away in the budget report is a suggestion that the Government might look at  ”a feasibility study into new ownership and financing models for the national road network, learning lessons from the water industry, to report on progress by Autumn Statement 2012″. It is hard to see what the water industry can teach the government about building roads (or dare I say stopping leaks, for that matter), but I hope that this will not mean that the 17th century model of toll roads will be rearing its feeble head again.

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  • Economics

    £150 million extra for construction mildly welcome – but housing crisis set to continue

    21st March 2012 — Filed under: Economics

    Paul Sellers Paul Sellers

    The Chancellor today announced another £150 million for the Get Britain Building Fund*, which aims to get builders back on housing sites with planning permission that have been shut down because of difficulties in accessing development finance.  This takes the total fund to £570 million. The UK has an entrenched housing shortage so this measure is broadly welcome as far as it goes, as is the previously announced New Buy initiative for first time buyers.

    The problem is that the Government’s cuts agenda is still depressing the economy. This is generating uncertainty about employment which feeds into a reluctance to buy which is reinforced by the difficulty in obtaining affordable finance and the continued slow fall of house prices (down 1 per cent in England and Wales since last year according to the official Land Registry**) .  Furthermore, recent changes to Right to Buy are likely to accelerate the decline of the social housing stock.

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  • Working Life

    Minimum Wage frozen for young people

    19th March 2012 — Filed under: Working Life

    Paul Sellers Paul Sellers

    The Government has today announced its response to the Low Pay Commision’s (LPC) recommendations for the National Minimum Wage rates to apply from October 2012 onwards*. There will be an increase of 11 pence for adults (1.8 per cent) and 5 pence on the apprentice rate (1.9 per cent), but the two youth rates will be frozen for 2012/2013. 

    With average pay settlements running at around 3 per cent and RPI inflation at 3.9 per cent, we believe that there was room for the LPC to do more this year. We are obviously very concerned about youth employment, but the LPC has been able to find no evidence that the NMW has played any part in this. I certainly do not believe that we could somehow price young people into work by lowering wages. Rather, it seems most likely that employers would simply pocket any savings. Furthermore, UK businesses are facing lack of demand at the moment, and squeezing wages will simply make this situation worse.

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  • Working Life

    Anywhere Working Week

    1st March 2012 — Filed under: Working Life

    Paul Sellers Paul Sellers

    The TUC is a supporter of the Anywhere Working campaign, which brings together organisations like Business in the Community, WWF-UK and Mumsnet with big companies like Microsoft, Regus and Vodafone to promote a new ways of flexible working. We are currently holding Anywhere Working Week to help promote flexibility:

    It is certainly true that developments in technology mean that many of us could work from home, or in a business drop-in centre or some other location rather than trekking into the office. Developments in technology have also made video conferences and other forms of virtual meeting a lot easier and more effective.

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  • Working Life

    Leap year – time for a working time resolution

    29th February 2012 — Filed under: Working Life

    Paul Sellers Paul Sellers

    Today is 29 February – which of course only usually comes around every 4 years. If you have  a 40-year career then you are likely to work on 29 February 7 times in all (the other 3 will fall at weekends).

    In many ways this is a year of contrasts and changes  when it comes to working time with, for example, the extra day of the leap year is matched by the extra bank holiday for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. This rare day it would be a good time for the more careless employers to resolve to clean up their act when it comes to working time.

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  • Work Your Proper Hours Day

    24th February 2012

    Paul Sellers Paul Sellers

    Today is the TUC’s annual work your proper hours day. If you usually work unpaid overtime why not try to arrange to have your proper lunch-breaks and go home on time. If you can’t do it today, just pick another day soon and try to stick to it.  Four out of five employees never work any unpaid hours, including the majority of salaried workers.

    Flexibility at work can be a good thing, but it has be about give and take. The problem is that our current economic difficulties mean that more employers have been choosing to rely on staff doing unpaid hours and that all “take ” and no “give” is obviously a bad thing.

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