Meeting of the Parliament 12 March 2019
I recognise that not enough businesses have signed up to the business pledge, which is why we have committed to refreshing it. I will come to that later, because that was part of the work of the action plan.
Fair work is work that balances the rights and responsibilities of employers and workers and that generates benefits for individuals, organisations and society.
Decent pay is fundamental to fair work. We were the first Government in the United Kingdom to become an accredited living wage employer. Our support in promoting the real living wage—funding the Poverty Alliance to take forward a range of activities—has seen the pay of more than 25,000 people in Scotland increase to at least the living wage through the living wage accreditation scheme. It has also seen us achieve our ambition of having 1,000 Scotland-based accredited living wage employers—there are currently more than 1,300—and it has seen us be the best performing of all four UK countries in terms of the proportion of the workforce that is paid at least the real living wage.
Still, we must do more. There remain too many in our working population who are paid below that level. We will continue to work with and fund the Poverty Alliance to increase by at least a further 25,000, over the period to 2021, the number of employed people who are paid at least the real living wage. We will target low-paid sectors, and we will work to create more living wage places—following the lead of Dundee, which is our first living wage city, as was announced just last week. We have also provided funding to enable adult social care workers to be paid the real living wage.
The fair work convention continues to provide the Scottish ministers with expert advice and recommendations, most recently through its report “Fair Work in Scotland’s Social Care Sector 2019”. The Government welcomes the convention’s activity and its report. Our action plan sets out that we will work with partners to consider and respond to the recommendations that the report lays out, to ensure that fair work is embedded in the delivery of social care services, including in the procurement process.
We are also making progress in other areas. We collaborated with the STUC to publish the severe weather charter; we have developed statutory guidance and best practice on fair work in public procurement; we have developed a fair work agreement between the Scottish ministers and the civil service trade unions; and 22 projects have received support through our workplace equality fund, which delivers employer-led innovative solutions to overcome workforce inequality. We will expand that fund in the coming year to enable businesses with innovative ideas to embed the dimensions of the fair work framework in their workplaces.
We will continue to call on the UK Government to respond to the challenge of creating a fair work environment. From introducing the Trade Union Act 2016 to blocking the private members’ bill that Stewart McDonald MP introduced, which sought to ban unpaid work trials, the UK Government has demonstrated that we cannot rely on it in relation to the fair work agenda. As we lay out in our action plan, we will continue to make the strong case that the UK Government needs to go further and put fair work at the centre of labour market policy.
Just as I recognise that we have made progress but face challenges, I recognise that we must work with others to listen and learn. Along with the fair work convention, I will host an international fair work summit later this year. I want that to be an opportunity not just to spotlight what Scotland is achieving but to learn from elsewhere and to share best practice. In the coming weeks, I will invite all parties in the Parliament to participate in a fair work round table so that we can collectively identify actions to embed fair work in Scotland’s workplaces by 2025.
Our fair work action plan will not be fixed in time; it will evolve in response to changes in our economy and society. I want to hear from others in that process of development, and I commit to Parliament that we will pursue the fair work agenda in an inclusive way.
Many employers already demonstrate fair work. We must build on that and convey the compelling case for fair work, getting every employer in Scotland fully behind our effort. To help employers, the Scottish Government will introduce a new benchmarking tool that will identify practical steps to progress employers’ fair work journey. We will also work with small employers and microemployers to develop a new online service offering access to guidance, support and tools to help employers to adopt fairer practices.
Over the past year, in drawing together our action plan, we have engaged extensively with employers, including to review the Scottish business pledge. We have responded to business feedback and have more clearly aligned the pledge with our fair work agenda. It retains payment of the real living wage as a core commitment and includes environmental impact for the first time.
As I said in response to Willie Rennie’s question, I want to see more businesses taking our pledge. That is why we are creating a new business-led learning network to better support businesses to sign up to the business pledge.
Through our action plan, we have set out our determination that all public investment will promote fair work. Through our new fair work first approach, which the First Minister announced in October, we will make full use of the Scottish Government’s financial powers. By the end of the parliamentary session, we will attach fair work criteria to as many funding streams, business support grants and public contracts as we can. That will drive investment in skills and training; the ending of the inappropriate use of zero-hours contracts; action to tackle the gender pay gap; genuine workforce engagement, including with trade unions; and payment of the real living wage. We will also work with Scottish Enterprise to pilot our fair work first approach, starting with the regional selective assistance grants that are awarded from next month.