Meeting of the Parliament 01 March 2016
No—I have only four minutes.
The Poverty Alliance continued:
“It is also difficult to imagine how anyone is meant to manage their finances week to week with no idea of what their earnings will actually be.”
Despite the fact that employment law is reserved to Westminster, the Scottish Government is promoting fair work practices. Last autumn, it issued statutory guidance that requires public authorities to consider how they can address fair work practices and discourage the use of inappropriate zero-hours contracts. The business pledge encourages employers to pay the living wage, and Scotland now has the lowest proportion of employees who are paid below the current level of £7.85 per hour of any of the UK nations. It was announced in the Scottish budget that £250 million is to be invested in social care, to allow councils to commission adult social care from the independent and voluntary sectors on the basis that care workers are paid the new living wage of £8.25 an hour.
We have to focus not just on pay and insecure work. Devolution of the work programme will provide an opportunity to improve the existing scheme, creating a simpler and more efficient service for those who are out of work. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation states:
“half of men and a third of women who claim Job Seekers Allowance do so within six months of a previous claim ending. A significant section of these individuals will have moved into and then out of work during this time”.
The committee was concerned about the lack of clarity in Department for Work and Pensions policy in relation to offering jobseekers zero-hours contract posts and the sanctions regime. We are concerned that some people may be forced into accepting unsuitable work with exploitative employers. Any new programme must take into consideration individuals and their circumstances because, otherwise, some of the poorest paid in the country will continue to face the revolving door of short-term employment. As Professor Chris Warhurst said in evidence,
“We should laud the good employers and set them up as exemplars of what can be done; we should provide support for the willing employers; we should educate the indifferent employers; and we should regulate for the bad employers.”—[Official Report, Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee, 30 September 2015; c 14.]
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