The Trades Union Congress (TUC) is calling on Boris Johnson to strengthen employee’s rights and take his attention away from the possibility of a no-deal Brexit.
The TUC research has shown that one in nine workers or 3.7 million of the UK workforce are in “precarious” jobs.
Other points made in the TUC report are that almost two million (1.85) are earning less than the minimum wage and are in low-paid self-employment roles.
There is a similar amount of employees in other forms of insecure work, such as zero-hours contract, agency, seasonal and casual workers.
These types of employees tend not to enjoy income security as well as miss out on workplace rights such as sick pay, parental leave or holidays.
The body say that under a no-deal Brexit, the UK’s employee insecurity could heighten even further as workplace protection rules will no longer be guaranteed.
The TUC is calling on Mr Johnson to make new rules which:
- Ban zero-hours contract and clamp down on self-employment
- Give all workers basic rights such as redundancy pay and family-friendly rights.
- Give workers the freedom to be protected by a union in every workplace.
Frances O’Grady, TUC general secretary, said:
Boris Johnson needs to stop threatening a no-deal Brexit – which would be a disaster for workers’ rights – and get on with enhancing labour protections now. We already have an insecure work crisis in Britain. Crashing out of Europe would make things far worse.
A good start would be to ban zero-hours contracts and give low-paid workers the right to speak to a union in their workplace. It’s not right that millions of workers still don’t know how much they’ll earn from one week to the next. And that so many are being denied even the most basic workplace rights.
The UK is set to leave the European Union (EU) on the 31st October 2019.
Darius is the editor of HRreview. He has previously worked as a finance reporter for the Daily Express. He studied his journalism masters at Press Association Training and graduated from the University of York with a degree in History.
