No Name, No Shame
This month we look at some of the latest news in relation to workers’ rights. It is difficult to resist a topical reference, so bearing in mind the recent coronation festivities, an employment lawyer might now be thinking about the forthcoming King’s speech and what it holds for employment rights. At the end of April a cross party group of MPs called for the Government to take steps to have the long-awaited employment bill announced in the speech.
The Government has been promising action in relation to employment rights for years. It commissioned the Taylor review of modern working practices and Taylor’s ‘Good Work’ report was published in July 2017. Almost none of Taylor’s recommendations have turned into legislative action.
One might be forgiven for thinking that the government is not as keen to improve the lot of working people as it claims to be. Indeed, since 2010 the most far reaching employment laws have all been about the reduction of the collective rights of workers and their trade unions.
Not only have unions been subjected to increased (and pointless) administrative workloads (e.g., the requirement for membership audits), and tighter regulation (through the enhanced powers of the Certification Officer) but the right to strike has been attacked on multiple occasions.
The Trade Union Act 2016 introduced new minimum ballot thresholds – deliberately aimed at making it more difficult to achieve the required majority for industrial action.
When it turned out that trade unions were able to persuade more of their members to vote ‘yes’, to comply with the new legal requirements, the Government jumped towards its latest solution: “minimum service levels” – under which employees and their unions will in effect be compelled to break their own strikes, a state of affairs that almost certainly puts the UK in breach of its international treaty obligations.
Has there in fact been any good news for employees and workers? Well, we did welcome the Government’s announcement in 2018 that it would “name and shame” those companies who failed to pay Employment Tribunal awards. Astonishingly, over 50% of all tribunal awards remain unpaid after 28-days. A significant proportion won’t have been paid at all. Not only is taking a tribunal case increasingly difficult, complex and legalistic (not to mention expensive), but there is a good prospect that you will not see the compensation you are awarded, in any event – since employers simply do not pay.
In principle then it has to be a good thing that BEIS should publicise the details of those employers who are failing to do the right thing by their workers and former workers.
Given all the above, it is perhaps no surprise therefore that a Freedom of Information Act request last month was reported to show that the number of employers who have been “named and shamed” is this: precisely nil.
When over half of awards remain unpaid, and when over 3,000 individual employers and companies have been reported to BEIS for non-payment, how on earth can it be that not a single case has been publicised?
One might almost think that the Government have been too busy trying to find ways to undermine workers’ rights, to worry about their promises to enhance them.
Author: Paul Scholey, Consultant Solicitor, Employment
