We campaign for fair employment rights, and for better jobs that give people learning opportunities, fulfillment at work and a decent work life balance.
Imagine you get home from work today and something’s broken. It doesn’t really matter what it is. Something’s up with the car, or the fridge isn’t actually keeping anything cold, or maybe the ceiling’s leaking. Regardless, something needs sorting and it’s going to cost you £500. Do you reckon you’d be able to cover the…
We are not asking for a lot. We are asking to be treated with respect, have guaranteed hours, and to be paid a decent living wage of £10 that we can afford to live on. It’s all very reasonable when you actually think about it. These are the words of Lewis Baker, one of the…
The transfer window finally came to a close last Thursday. As ever, it was characterised by a lot of headlines about wages. At the TUC, we’re a fan of wages being in the news – but in Premier League football, it’s not low wages that are making headlines. Real wages have been falling for the…
Working Families and workplace solutions expert Bright Horizons track key issues for working parents in our annual Modern Families Index. In 2016, we highlighted how millennial parents are feeling at work (prone to burn out and desperate for a better work-life balance); and in 2017 we warned the UK risks a ‘fatherhood penalty’, with fathers…
Today we’re publishing the findings from our research with over 1,000 young mums and dads. We wanted to know what young mums and dads thought about the workplace rights which are supposed to help them manage their childcare. We asked them: If they are aware of three key existing employment rights which could help working…
Enforcement of the NMW for sleep-ins temporarily suspended in social care Last month the government announced it was waiving historic financial penalties and temporarily suspending enforcement of the National Minimum Wage (NMW) for workers required to ‘sleep-in’ on their employer’s premises overnight to look after social care residents. This is unprecedented action from a government…
The ONS release on the number of zero-hours contracts yesterday showed that there has a been a fall of 20,000 over the year. This is the first fall we have seen in the data series. However, at 2%, this is a drop in the ocean. There are still around 900,000 of these controversial contracts. Numbers on zero-hour…
The Immigration Act 2016 brought about significant changes to the remit and powers of the Gangmasters Labour Abuse Authority. It also created the position of director of labour market enforcement. Sir David Metcalf has been appointed to this post. It is the director who is responsible for developing an overarching strategy for the three key…
Workers have suffered from a lost decade of wage growth. While the jobs recovery has been strong, the wage recovery has been agonisingly slow. Wages in 2016 were still 4% lower in real terms than they were a decade before, and they are falling again. Britain’s dreadful performance on productivity is the key to understanding…
In our evidence to the Taylor Review, the TUC and trade unions argued that strengthening workers’ rights to voice in the workplace is key to addressing insecurity and exploitation at work. So was the Taylor Review listening? “The Review believes that for work to be fair and decent, workers must have a voice.” A good…