Working Life

  • Working Life

    National Work from Home Day

    18th May 2012 — Filed under: Working Life

    Philip Flaxton Philip Flaxton

    Part of Work Wise UK Week 2012Today is National Work from Home Day, where staff and employers are encouraged to try working from home to experience the positive impact upon staff wellbeing, efficiency and productivity, together with the added benefits of reducing the numbers of commuters on the roads and rail.

    It’s especially pertinent this year with the Olympics and Paralympics just around the corner: working from home is one of the suggestions for working around the Games over the summer. Many organisations, especially those located near the venues, already realise the benefits and have in place plans to enable staff to work smarter during the summer, and allow their business to continue uninterrupted.

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  • Working Life

    The Continuing Tale of Migrant Exploitation

    16th May 2012 — Filed under: Working Life

    Sean Bamford Sean Bamford

    Yesterday’s guest post from Louise Woodruff of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) made for harrowing but unfortunately all too familiar reading. Louise provided a resume on the new JRF report  ‘Experiences of Forced Labour in the UK Food Industry’. The JRF report is both a catalogue of human misery but also of the greed and depravity of some employers.

    Based on JRF’s usual high quality research we are told how some employers set-out to exploit vulnerable migrant workers. Often this is done through the creation of debt bondage. Gangmasters’ demanding fees for providing work, none payment of wages, unlawful deductions from wages or deliberately with-holding work whilst providing loans. All is done to build a total dependency of the employee on the employer. This compliance through the use of debt bondage is frequently backed up by physical and mental abuse. In addition, accommodation is also provided by the employer which means loss of job also means no-where to live!

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  • Working Life

    Do you know where your food comes from? The shocking reality of #forcedlabour in the UK food industry

    15th May 2012 — Filed under: Working Life

    Louise Woodruff Louise Woodruff

    We rightly ask more questions these days about where our food comes from, what it contains and how it has been farmed. But new research suggests we should be as concerned about people employed to pick, process and cook our food here in the UK.

    In one of the largest studies of its kind, new JRF research on forced labour exposes blatant exploitation of migrants working in UK food production, processing and restaurants.

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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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  • International

    Global gender pay gap has stopped shrinking

    8th March 2012 — Filed under: International, Working Life

    Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    On International Women’s Day 2012, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has published a fascinating study (really, a series of studies) into developments in the gender pay gap – the amount that men are paid more than women after taking account of various factors that might explain it. And the really bad news is that after narrowing for much of the last half of the 20th century, the gender pay gap has stopped shrinking. From the mid-1990s onwards, the forward march of equal pay globally has halted.

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  • Working Life

    Domestic Workers at Risk

    7th March 2012 — Filed under: Working Life

    Sean Bamford Sean Bamford

    If you drew up a list of which were the most vulnerable workers in our society, then domestic workers would come at or near the top for most of us. Within the category of domestic workers you might well single out those who live in the home of their employers, who are overwhelmingly women, as being particularly at risk. What then of domestic workers who live in the employers’ homes but are here in the UK on a visa? These most vulnerable of the vulnerable, live amongst us as the Overseas Domestic Workers (ODWs) – migrant workers of employers who are themselves migrants.

    You do not have to just surmise that ODWs are vulnerable; there is evidence which emphatically confirms their vulnerability in shocking terms. In 2011 Kalayaan, an organisation which provides advice, advocacy and support services to ODWs, carried out research amongst it’s members. This research found 54% had experienced psychological abuse, 18% physical abuse and 7% sexual abuse. In addition 76% were not allowed a day off, 53% worked a 16 hour day and 60% received under £50 per week. Listening to the stories of some of these women is both gut wrenching and fills you with rage. Women far from their families and the communities they know, isolated in an house which many are forbidden to leave, subject to daily abuse and threatened with being thrown into the street should they complain.

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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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  • Working Life

    New evidence that excessive working time damages your health

    26th January 2012 — Filed under: Working Life

    Paul Sellers Paul Sellers

    A new study published today reaffirmed the link between long working hours and depression.  As the evidence of serious health risks continues to pile up, why on earth do the Government and the CBI continue to oppose strengthening the Working Time Directive?

    It seems to have become like an article of faith, making their stance difficult to shift with even the most rational argument.

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  • Working Life

    Everybody’s happy nowadays – not!

    6th January 2012 — Filed under: Working Life

    Paul Sellers Paul Sellers

    On a lighter note, a study of working practices in offices commissioned by the Mars company is reported in the Daily Mail.

    The tone of the piece is that we are all working longer but that we are reasonably happy about it. However, reading between the lines there is a more interesting story here – “the average worker …. is made to feel angry by bosses once a day.” – sounds like there is still a strong need for trade unions here!

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