Hansard

The Fraser of Allander institute defines fair work as

“work that offers effective voice, opportunity, security, fulfilment and respect.”

Those benefits underpin one another. Employees who can make their voice heard are more likely to feel fulfilled by their work and respected in the workplace. The institute is clear that

“fair work leads to better quality and more fulfilling jobs.”

That is why I am pleased to welcome the publication of the Government’s “Fair Work Action Plan” as the next step in the process of creating fair working conditions for everyone in Scotland. We must certainly continue to move forward on the matter at this time, when zero-hours contracts are prevalent among the jobs of the younger generation—although they are not exclusively found among our young people’s jobs—and when some employers remain resistant to paying the real living wage.

Further, it remains the case that a woman’s earnings over her lifetime are likely to be lower than those of her male colleagues. The UK has the ninth-highest gender pay gap of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries—the gap between the average earnings of women and the average earnings of men is a shocking 16.5 per cent. We can do better. The gap in Denmark is just 5.7 per cent and, in New Zealand, it is 7.2 per cent.

It is clear that the Government is making progress on the fair work agenda, but I am sure that we would all agree that much more remains to be done. Everyone deserves to be paid a wage that lifts them out of poverty, and no one should be paid less because of their gender.

The Greens have persistently called for Government business support services—including grants and loans—to apply ethical criteria including payment of the real living wage, no use of exploitative contracts, union recognition and no tax avoidance or use of tax havens. Our 2016 manifesto pledged that the Greens would campaign to make Government business support available only to companies that plan to pay the real living wage, to avoid zero-hours contracts, to recognise trade unions, to reduce the gap between the highest and lowest paid, to pay women and men equally and to be environmentally responsible. Indeed, we were pleased that the Government backed our amendment calling for such conditions to be set during a similar debate in May 2017. I am pleased that those have been incorporated into the fair work action plan.

The fair work first programme will impose a new set of criteria for businesses to meet when applying for Government grants and business support. The plan states that, for an employer to be eligible for Government business support, it must commit to investing in skills and training, taking action to close the gender pay gap, paying the real living wage and enhancing workforce engagement.

In the past, the Scottish Government has been resistant to our calls to place additional ethical criteria on business grants and loans, and has preferred the approach of paving the high road by rewarding the good behaviour of businesses rather than by blocking the low road that is taken by poorly behaving businesses.

However, that approach is limited. Yes, there will always be businesses that genuinely want to do the right thing but might just need a bit of help to make it financially viable—for example, by building the initial costs of a living wage policy into their financial planning, but there will also always be businesses that find it beneficial to push exploitation as far as they can get away with, and regulation and enforcement will be needed to steer such businesses on to the high path. I like to think that when those businesses are steered on to that high path they, too, will become convinced of the benefits of such practice.

Limiting our focus to incentivising good behaviour by employers will not help us to create the conditions for fair work across our economy. We recognise that the Scottish Government does not have control over all the policy levers, given that regulation of employment remains reserved. The attachment of fair work standards to Government-funded grants, loans and businesses is, however, an important step, for which we have been calling for years. The Green amendment welcomes progress in that regard and goes further by asking—again—that we take a wider look at our economy and move beyond the ideological fixation on delivering economic growth. We must look at non-growth wellbeing factors, including health and job security. I will expand on that in my closing speech.

On the other amendments, I welcome Labour’s call to look at how fair work conditions can be improved through procurement processes. However, for as long as we do not have full control over Scotland’s economy, we cannot progress that. Also, it is unreasonable not to acknowledge the positive steps that have been taken to strengthen the fair work agenda in the most recent action plan. We agree with Labour on the need to go further and faster, but we want the commitment to achieving fair work standards by 2025 to remain in the motion that is agreed to.

The Conservatives cite the UK’s “Good Work Plan” in their amendment. There are positive developments in that plan, but it represents a failure to use the powers of regulation and enforcement that are available to the UK Government but not to the Scottish Government. The plan also comes from a Government that introduced a scam national living wage—