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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.

  • Working Life

    May Day – have your say!

    7th June 2011 — Filed under: Working Life

    Paul Sellers Paul Sellers

    The Government is currently undertaking a “pre-consultation” on plans to move the May Day holiday to a colder, wetter time month from 2013 onwards – and this is supposed to stimulate domestic tourism! I can report today that unions have now been joined in opposing these plans by some big retail companies and trade associations,  whilst a number of big players in the tourist industry are now saying that what they really want is an extra public holiday.

    The Government’s consultation ends on Thursday. If you want to join us in defending May Day and calling for an additional bank holiday, read on.

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  • Working Life

    Work from home day: Why on earth are there not more people working from home?

    20th May 2011 — Filed under: Working Life

    Paul Sellers Paul Sellers

    Today is Work From Home Day, which is an annual event organised by WorkWiseUK to promote smarter working – flexible working and  high-quality home-working. The TUC is interested in home working because there is a huge unmet demand amongst workers. Indeed, research commissioned by the previous government suggests some 4.5 million more employees would like to work from home for at least part of the week.

    The problem is that difficult economic times means that many employers have turned their attention to other matters, whilst some employees have also become more reluctant to ask  for home-working in workplaces where rumours of redundancies are in the air. More now needs to be done to promote smarter working, otherwise we will miss out on an easy win-win solution that also benefits our environment.

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  • Society & Welfare

    Mortgage repossessions still too high

    12th May 2011 — Filed under: Society & Welfare

    Paul Sellers Paul Sellers

    New figures published today by the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) show that there were 36,000 repossessions in 2010, whilst 175,000 households were in arrears. These figures are an improvement on 2009, with repossessions declining by 24% and arrears by 13%. there is no room for complacency  though, as the CML forecasts a slight rise in mortgage problems this year ,with 40,000 repossessions and 180,000 households expected. Taking into account the average family size, this equates to more than half a million people’s  homes at risk.

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  • Working Life

    Bank holidays: fighting to make them fair

    4th May 2011 — Filed under: Working Life

    Paul Sellers Paul Sellers

    “More time off” has always been a good trade union demand, which is one reason why the TUC has always been concerned with creating public holidays and making them fair.

    Most employers simply paid their staff to take the day of the Royal Wedding as a day off, and honoured their contractual rights in cases where employees had to work. However, a miserly minority decided to treat the bank holiday as a normal working day, whilst some agency workers were sent home without pay.

    The TUC has written to Business Secretary Vince Cable calling on him to changing the law on special bank holidays by making a simple amendment to the Working Time Regulations, so that the minimum statutory entitlement of 5.6 weeks paid leave and public holidays is increased by one day in years when a special one-off holiday is proclaimed.

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  • Society & Welfare

    Mortgages are still too hard to get

    8th April 2011 — Filed under: Society & Welfare

    Paul Sellers Paul Sellers

    New monthly figures published by the Council of Mortgage Lenders today show loans recovering slightly after a disastrous January. However, the number of loans granted for house purchases and remortgages were both down by 12% compared to February 2010.

    The Government simply has to bear down on the banks to start making more mortgage finance available, otherwise the housing market will remain at a standstill, and ordinary working people will continue to be squeezed out.

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  • Working Life

    Will the government crack down on the abuse of unpaid interns?

    7th April 2011 — Filed under: Working Life

    Paul Sellers Paul Sellers

    The TUC has been very worried for some time now about the exponential spread of unpaid “interns”. Good work experience is valuable, but demanding unpaid work as the toll for young people trying to start their careers is despicable.

    There are some signs this week that the laissez-faire attitude to bad internships might be about to change. The Government has promised a push to make internships fairer as one of the measures outlined in its Social Mobility Strategy, whilst today’s Low Pay Commission report urges the government to enforce the National Minimum Wage (NMW) for interns.

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  • Society & Welfare

    Some help for first-time buyers and those struggling with mortgage repayments raises quiet cheer

    23rd March 2011 — Filed under: Society & Welfare

    Paul Sellers Paul Sellers

    One of the more welcome corners of today’s budget was the announcement that £250 million has been earmarked to help first-time buyers – although they will have to pay the money back.

    The Government will offer five year interest-free loans to up to 10,000 buyers in order to help them raise the necessary deposit. This equates to an average of £25,000 per head.

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  • Labour market

    Minimum Wage – cheer as Conservatives choke Chope

    18th March 2011 — Filed under: Labour market

    Paul Sellers Paul Sellers

    Conservative backbencher Christopher Chope had a private members bill on the National Minimum Wage (NMW) on the parliamentary agenda for today’s session. When it came to the crunch he decided to withdraw his bill, as the government would not support it.

    I wanted to celebrate this non-event, as it is not often that I can say that Government has got something absolutely right, and I’m not quite sure when I will get such an opportunity again.

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  • Society & Welfare

    Government minister complains that councils make the wrong kind of cuts

    18th March 2011 — Filed under: Society & Welfare

    Paul Sellers Paul Sellers

    Housing minister Grant Shapps has a letter in today’s Daily Telegraph  complaining that local authorities are drastically cutting back their work on the Supporting People initiative, even though his department have themselves only cut back the grant for this work by 12%(!)

    It would be naive indeed to think that it would be possible to more than decimate the funding of local authorities and still maintain such services. If councils are running sacred at the moment it is clearly because the scale of Government cutbacks is so very frightening.

    I can’t help feeling that we will see a lot more of these attempts to shift blame as the local elections begin to loom. They should be strongly resisted.

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  • Working Life

    Mayday! May holiday still under threat

    5th February 2011 — Filed under: Working Life

    Paul Sellers Paul Sellers

    I was saddened to read in the Guardian that some people within Government are still briefing in favour of moving the May Day bank holiday to October. It is strongly rumoured that this proposal will be in the new DCMS tourism strategy, which the culture secretary Jeremy Hunt has scheduled for publication early this month.

    Moving May Day would not help businesses or working people. However, it has long been the bête noir of the more rabid Conservative backbenchers, some of whom have criticised it as being a socialist holiday, so such a proposal would be purely driven by ideological considerations.

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