Tag: five point plan

TUC: Workers “cheated” out of £2bn of holiday pay last year under Tories

New analysis shows more than a million employees didn’t get any of the paid holiday they were entitled to last year – with BME employees hardest hit

  • Union body says Tory failures on labour market enforcement have allowed bad bosses to exploit staff  
  • TUC launches “five-point plan for enforcement” as new polling shows “huge support” for better enforcement from voters across the political spectrum 
  • And union body says government’s Fair Work Agency could bring enforcement bodies together with “real teeth” to “finally hold rogue employers to account” 

Workers across the UK are being “cheated” out £2 billion worth of holiday pay, according to a new report published to mark the beginning of the TUC’s 146th annual Congress today (Sunday). 

UK workers are legally entitled to 28 days paid leave for a typical five-day week, with pro-rata entitlement for those who work fewer than five days. 

But research by the union body shows that 1.1 million employees (1 in 25 employees) did not get a single one of the 28 days’ paid holiday, or equivalent, they were entitled to last year. 

TUC analysis shows these missing weeks add up to £2 billion in lost holiday pay – or on average £1,800 per affected employee. 

BME workers and low-paid hardest hit 

The research shows that Black and minority ethnic (BME) staff were hardest hit – 6% of BME employees did not get any paid holiday last year, compared to 4% of white employees. 

And low-paid workers were most at risk of losing their paid holiday entitlement. The jobs with the highest numbers of staff losing out were waiters and waitresses (59,000), care workers and home carers (55,000), and kitchen and catering assistants (50,000). 

Millions missing out on key employment rights  

In addition to holiday pay, the union body says millions of workers are missing out on many other basic employment rights due to a lack of enforcement. 

Recent analysis from the government’s Low Pay Commission found that 365,000 workers are underpaid the minimum wage – more than one in five of all workers on the wage floor.  

And the Resolution Foundation also found hundreds of thousands of workers have been shut out of basic rights like access to their payslip (1.8 million) so can’t check if they are being paid correctly, and auto-enrolment into a pension scheme (600,000). 

The TUC says the main reasons people are missing out on paid holiday are: 

  • Workplace cultures where workers fear that requesting paid time off could lead to being treated unfavourably. 
  • Workers being set unrealistic workloads that do not allow time to take leave. 
  • Employers deliberately denying holiday requests and managing out people’s leave. 
  • Employers not keeping up to date with the law. 

Five-point plan on enforcement 

To address this enforcement crisis, the TUC is today (Sunday) launching its five-point plan for effective enforcement of employment rights in the UK. 

The union body says that workers are currently losing out on wages and other key entitlements, while decent employers are undercut by those that don’t meet their legal duties. 

The TUC report supports the new Labour government’s pledge to introduce a Fair Work Agency bringing together several existing state enforcement bodies. It calls on ministers to: 

  1. Create a properly resourced single enforcement body with a strong union voice in its governance structures. 
  1. Recycle fines back into the enforcement system. 
  1. Increase the number of inspectors and inspections. 
  1. Extend the licensing scheme to new sectors.  
  1. Build international links and create a firewall with immigration enforcement to crack down on the exploitation of migrant workers.  

The Fair Work Agency 

As part of the Employment Rights Bill, Labour has pledged to create a new Fair Work Agency – a single enforcement body with power to crack down on bad employment practices, uphold rights at work and level the playing field for good employers who follow the rules.   

It will help bolster the work of unions to ensure people are treated fairly at work. 

TUC polling of more than 3,000 voters – conducted by Opinium on the day after the election – showed large-scale backing across the political spectrum for Labour’s Fair Work Agency. 

More than six in 10 (61%) voters support introducing a single enforcement body to make sure that workers’ rights are properly enforced – with less than one in 10 (8%) against. 

And the polling showed clear support for the agency across the political spectrum. 

Conservative voters support the policy by a margin of around three (50%) to one (17%), and there is even more support for the Fair Work Agency amongst Reform voters (53% to 13%). 

TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak said: “We all deserve a break from work to spend time off with our friends and family. 

“But more than a million working people have been deprived of any of the paid leave they are due. And hundreds of thousands more have been denied basic rights like being paid the minimum wage. 

“The Conservative government sat back and let bad employers cheat their staff out of their basic workplace rights. 

“Tory ministers were more concerned about stopping people getting what they were due by introducing anti-union measures, than funding enforcement bodies properly.” 

On the need for the new government’s Employment Bill and Fair Work Agency, Paul Nowak said: “Now it’s time to reset the dial and to end the Tories’ race to the bottom. 

“This week at Congress we will be debating how we can drive up standards at work. These shocking findings show why we need the Employment Rights Bill and the Fair Work Agency. 

“Working people deserve to be treated fairly and have a minimum floor of rights upheld. 

“And there is huge support from the public – right across the political spectrum – for this.” 

On the need for a level playing field, Paul Nowak added: “Good employers have nothing to fear as they’re already playing by the rules. Now it’s time to level the playing field. 

“Labour’s Fair Work Agency must have real teeth and hold rogue employers who think they are above the law to account.” 

Five-point plan:

The TUC’s five-point plan is available at:

https://www.tuc.org.uk/sites/default/files/2024-09/makingemploymentrightswork.pdf 

Child abuse image crimes in Scotland pass 3,000 in five years

Calls for stronger Online Safety Bill

  • Child abuse image offences recorded by Police Scotland up 13% last year and reach over 3,100 in just five years
  • ‘Social media being used as a conveyor belt to produce child abuse images on an industrial scale’
  • NSPCC sets out five-point plan to strengthen Online Safety Bill so it decisively disrupts the production and spread of child abuse material on social media

More than 3,000 child abuse image crimes were recorded by Police Scotland over the last five years, the NSPCC has revealed today.

Data obtained from Police Scotland shows the number of offences relating to possessing, taking, making, and distributing child abuse material peaked at 660 last year (2020/21) – up 13% from 2019/20.

The NSPCC previously warned the pandemic had created a ‘perfect storm’ for grooming and abuse online.

The charity said social media is being used by groomers as a conveyor belt to produce and share child abuse images on an industrial scale. It added that the issue of young people being groomed into sharing images of their own abuse has become pervasive.

The NSPCC is urging the UK Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries to seize the opportunity to strengthen the Online Safety Bill, so it results in decisive action that disrupts the production and spread of child abuse material on social media.  

The child protection charity said that behind every offence could be multiple victims and images, and children will continue to be at risk of an unprecedented scale of abuse unless the draft legislation is significantly strengthened.

Ahead of a report by Parliamentarians who scrutinised the draft Online Safety Bill expected next week, the NSPCC, which has been at the forefront of campaigning for social media regulation, set out a five-point plan to strengthen the legislation so it effectively prevents online abuse.

The charity’s online safety experts said the Bill currently fails to address how offenders organise across social media, doesn’t effectively tackle abuse in private messaging and fails to hold top managers liable for harm or give children a voice to balance the power of industry.

The NSPCC is critical of the industry response to child abuse material. A Facebook whistle-blower recently revealed Meta apply a return-on-investment principle to combatting child abuse material and don’t know the true scale of the problem as the company “doesn’t track it”.

And research by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection has raised concerns about whether some platforms have consistent and effective processes to takedown child abuse images, with some companies pushing back on removing abuse images of children as young as ten.

NSPCC Chief Executive, Sir Peter Wanless, said: “The staggering amount of child sexual abuse image offences is being fuelled by the ease with which offenders are able to groom children across social media to produce and share images on an industrial scale.

“The UK Government recognises the problem and has created a landmark opportunity with the Online Safety Bill. We admire Nadine Dorries’ declared intent that child protection is her number one objective.

“But our assessment is that the legislation needs strengthening in clear and specific ways if it is to fundamentally address the complex nature of online abuse and prevent children from coming to avoidable harm.” 

The NSPCC’s five-point plan lays out where the Online Safety Bill must be strengthened to:

  1. Disrupt well-established grooming pathways: The Bill fails to tackle convincingly the ways groomers commit abuse across platforms to produce new child abuse images. Offenders exploit the design features of social media sites to contact multiple children before moving them to risky livestreaming or encrypted sites. The Bill needs to be strengthened to require platforms to explicitly risk assess for cross platform harms.
  2. Tackle how offenders use social media to organise abuse: The Bill fails to address how abusers use social media as a shop window to advertise their sexual interest in children, make contact with other offenders and post digital breadcrumbs as a guide for them to find child abuse content. Recent whistle-blower testimony found Facebook groups were being used to facilitate child abuse and signpost to illegal material hosted on other sites.
  3. Put a duty on every social media platform to have a named manager responsible for children’s safety: To focus minds on child abuse every platform should be required to appoint a named person liable for preventing child abuse, with the ultimate threat of criminal sanctions for product decisions that put children in harm’s way.
  4. Give the regulator more effective powers to combat abuse in private messaging: Private messaging is the frontline of child abuse but the regulator needs clearer powers to take action against companies that don’t have a plan to tackle it. Companies should have to risk assess end-to-end encryption plans before they go ahead so the regulator is not left in the dark about abuse taking place in private messaging.
  5. Give children a funded voice to fight for their interests: Under current proposals for regulation children who have been abused will get less statutory protections than bus passengers or Post Office users. There needs to be provision for a statutory body to represent the interests of children, funded by an industry levy, in the Bill.

The NSPCC is mobilising supporters to sign an open letter to Nadine Dorries asking the UK Culture Secretary to make sure children are at the heart of the Online Safety Bill.

The NSPCC’s full analysis of the draft Online Safety Bill is set out in their ‘Duty to Protect’ report.