Today is the opening day of the TUC’s two day Disabled Worker’s Conference. And last week was the Mental Health Awareness Week, with the theme of Surviving or Thriving? While the employment rate of disabled people has increased in the last few years there is still a large disability employment gap between disabled and non-disabled…
What is insecure work and has it increased? This blog examines precarious or insecure work, how it manifests itself in the workplace and whether insecure work practices have increased. Insecure work includes: agency work or seasonal, casual, temporary work people on zero-hours contracts and low-paid self-employed workers. Recent TUC research has found that insecure work has increased…
It would seem digitisation is occurring, at a greater or lesser pace in different countries. There are ever-more sophisticated computers, robots and advances in AI. Whether we are on the tipping point of a fourth industrial revolution, is a pertinent question. Digitisation could have both positive and negative consequences for workers and society. We should…
The debate about technological change, and whether it could lead to widespread unemployment has been revived in recent years in several studies. The seminal 2013 paper by Frey and Osborne sparked much debate about the impact of digitisation. They claimed that 47% of US jobs are susceptible to being computerised. A 2016 paper by the…
This is the first in a series of blogs considering the extent of robotisation and its impact. In a lecture at the TUC in November 2015, Andy Haldane, Chief Economist to the Bank of England said that “we may be on the cusp of the fourth industrial revolution”. Clearly, the use of technology is not…
This afternoon in the #AutumnStatement Philip Hammond announced a number of measures that go some way to addressing the crisis we are facing in both the private and rented housing sectors. These include: A Housing Infrastructure Fund of £2.3bn by 2020-2021, funded by the NPIF (National Productivity Investment Fund) and allocated to local government to…
The TUC has published new analysis of the Labour Force Survey (LFS) ahead of its annual Disabled Workers’ conference which shows the differences in employment, unemployment and earnings between disabled and non-disabled workers. We have set out some key findings below. The government manifesto commitment to halve the employment gap, which would mean 63 per…
Today in the Budget the Chancellor once again asserted that ‘…we are the builders’. However, this hasn’t yet been borne out when it comes to housing. In the 2015 Autumn Statement, and again in the Budget, the Chancellor set out the government’s commitment to deliver 400,000 affordable housing starts by 2020-21, including 200,000 Starter Homes…
Today the Chancellor made a number of announcements in relation to housing, primarily in relation to people claiming benefits for social housing. Young people in particular will suffer as the government are abolishing the automatic entitlement for young people aged 18-21 to receive housing benefit. The one per cent cut in housing benefit for four…
In the past five years Child Benefit has been frozen, capped and taken away from better off families. Eroding Child Benefit, a new TUC report out today reveals that a couple with two children are already £5.95 a week worse off as a result and by the time of the next election that loss is…