Number of people in UK with insecure jobs rises to 3.7 million, TUC report says

theguardian.com:

The Trades Union Congress has criticised the Conservative party for “a litany of failures on workers’ rights” as it published analysis showing a rise in insecure jobs in the five years since the government pledged to make work in the UK fairer.

At least 3.7 million people in Britain are in insecure jobs, up from 3.6m in 2021, out of a total workforce of 34 million, according to analysis of government data by the TUC. That compares to 3.2 million in late 2016, before the publication of the Taylor review, a landmark government-backed report on work in the UK.

Frances O’Grady, the TUC’s general secretary, said Boris Johnson’s government appeared “intent on dragging us backwards on rights in the workplace”.

Johnson’s eventual acquiescence to a wave of Conservative MPs calling for his resignation as prime minister means he is likely to leave office without bringing in an employment bill first promised when he won a majority in the 2019 general election.

The repeated postponement of the bill has come as relations between the government and unions have rapidly deteriorated. The government has said it will change the law to allow companies in effect to break strikes by using agency staff, and Johnson’s emphasis on seeking a “high wage” economy has been replaced with direct criticism of workers asking for higher pay.

Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, commissioned a report by Matthew Taylor, a former head of the No 10 policy unit under Tony Blair, to examine how the law could change to ensure “all work is fair and decent”. It followed the rapid rise of new ways of working such as zero-hours contracts and gig economy jobs, in which people work for a company but are counted as self-employed, therefore losing benefits and protections.

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