All workers in the UK “should be treated like human beings, not cogs in a machine”, according to Matthew Taylor, who has carried out a government review of modern employment practices including the so-called “gig” economy in which short-term or freelance work increasingly becomes the norm.
Mr Taylor, a former policy adviser to Tony Blair, was commissioned to carry out the report by Theresa May, soon after she became Prime Minister. The 115-page independent review sets out how employment practices should change in line with modern life. The review says that all work should be “fair and decent” and that people on lower incomes in particular, should have routes to progress in work.
Although Mr Taylor described the UK’s flexible labour market as a strength, he warned it should not be “one-sided flexibility” which suits the employer, but not the worker.
He recommended a right for employees to request set hours, for casual workers to be given a list of their rights on starting a job, and that the Low Pay Commission considers introducing a new minimum wage for zero hours contract workers.
CSAN, the social action arm of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, has welcomed the report. “Catholic Social Teaching emphasises the dignity of the worker, the benefits for the individual and for society of just wages, the importance of a healthy work-life balance and an economy which serves the people,” said CSAN’s chief executive, Phil McCarthy.
“The expansion of the ‘gig economy’, whilst innovative, flexible and good for some, could pose a threat to these values without protections such as those Mr Taylor recommends,” he added.
At the review’s launch, the Prime Minister said banning the zero hours contract would do more harm than good, but stressed that these contracts must not be used to exploit people. The Government is to study the report and respond to it later this year, Mrs May added.
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