Re: There can always be more unemployment and fewer workers rights. Archived Message
Posted by Ken Waldron on August 31, 2019, 5:11 am, in reply to "Re: There can always be more unemployment and fewer workers rights."
"It's strange isn't it? It's like zero contract hours never happened." Britain has pretty much the most deregulated labour market in Europe & also the the largest increase of supposed self-employment in the EU; and not because its economy is doing better than everyone else. "The UK, the National Institute for Economic and Social Research argued, is already an “exceptional case” when it comes to non-traditional work, saying that the UK government’s lack of action to change its employment rules becomes in practice a policy position: “absence of new legislation, in the context of other changes, can be regarded as a policy decision in itself, as it can be seen as an endorsement of the already existing deregulated and liberal labour market”. Or in other words, apparent inaction on the labour market is in fact a positive endorsement of the status quo. A thumbs-up to companies who seek to evade their responsibilities as employers by coasting on zero-hours contracts, and denying sick pay to couriers, teachers or care workers. Other European countries have introduced explicit protections tackling aspects of insecure work: France only allows fixed-term employment for up to 18 months (though faces high youth unemployment), while Germany only allows agency workers to be used for 18 months. Elsewhere, the Netherlands has placed some restrictions on zero-hours contracts, regulating for a minimum number of paid hours for each shift, and requiring hours to be made regular if a certain number of hours are worked in a given time period. Other countries give employers much more direct responsibility for their contractors, even if self-employed, requiring them to check that people working in such a way make equivalent rates to what the minimum wage would be for employed workers" "...In theory the UK government has promised to transfer all (new EU) protections into UK law by the time the UK leaves the EU, without watering down or removing any of the existing protections – though several Conservative backbenchers have called for exactly this..." -Its patently obvious that promise wont be kept. The UK last year said it was introducing its own "similar" regulations package including such eye watering gems as: "...the right to request more predictable hours." Yea, you read that correctly: not a right to "have" but a right to "request". -So your big brave Brexit-Brit new "right" concerning Zero contract hours is merely the right to beg for better.
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