Nearly 60% of British children who fall below the poverty line live in households where at least one adult is in work. Children growing up in poor households are more likely to have poor health, to perform badly at school, to become teenage parents, and to come into early contact with the police. This costs [...]

Filed under: Election, Minimum wage, Social exclusion | 1 Comment »

The stamp duty holiday for first time buyers of properties up to £250,000 announced in the budget will help a lot of people taking their first steps onto the property market. The maximum saving is £2,500 – which is enough to furnish your first home. It’s therefore sad that there has been whinging from some [...]

Filed under: Budget, Housing, Tax | 2 Comments »

There has never yet been a minimum wage increase that has failed to provoke dire prognostications from some employers groups and today was no exception. Last autumn we once again saw employers’ groups lining up to argue that the minimum wage should be frozen. Leaving aside the question of why low paid workers should have [...]

Filed under: Minimum wage | 1 Comment »

We have now truly bid farewell to summertime. The clocks have changed, the nights are drawing in and the leaves are starting to fall. Wouldn’t it be great if we had another bank holiday today to cheer us all up? The TUC has joined together with the main voluntary organisations to call for a new [...]

Filed under: Employment law, Work-life balance, Working time | Comments Off

I’ve just had a phone call from an employee whose boss told him that he would be treated as “absent without leave” yesterday, even though he had phoned his workplace and left a message saying that he would not be able to get to work because there were no buses running throughout the city. This took place on [...]

Filed under: Employment law, Safety | Comments Off

If you read “business attacks ruling on holidays” in the FT today, or the Sun’s lurid “fury over sick pay ruling” you might be excused for thinking that this week’s ruling from the European Court of Justice was all about the EU bashing British business. Luckily, much of the business reaction is either spin or bunkum.

Filed under: Employment law, Working time | Comments Off

On 17 December there will be a key vote in the European Parliament on the future of the opt-outs from the 48 hour week. I’ve just heard that the ETUC has called a demonstration at the Parliament in Strasbourg on the eve of this vote (16 Dec), starting at 1.30. Thus its time to check that [...]

Filed under: Working time | Comments Off

I was saddened to read the FT story that shows that the Government still does not quite “get” the case for the Working Time Directive. The Employment Committee of the European Parliament is meeting today to discuss a report that includes the end of the so-called individual opt-outs from the 48 hour limit on average weekly [...]

Filed under: Work-life balance, Working time | 1 Comment »

A recent story in the Sunday Mirror reported that a senior Tory said that the minimum wage could be “allowed to wither on the vine”. Is the story true? Well, it certainly a tactic that has been pursued  by Republican presidents in the USA. The story has not been rebutted by the Conservative Party, and the policy [...]

Filed under: Financial crisis, Inequality, Labour market, Vulnerable workers | Comments Off

Do you need cheering up after months of reading about the world financial crisis? Would the prospect of another holiday help lift your spirits? August bank holiday is now just a dim memory and Christmas is still too far away to start counting the days on the wall of my office. This long haul is just one of the reasons [...]

Filed under: Working time | 1 Comment »

Yesterday the Labour Party Conference voted to end the UK’s individual opt-outs from the Working Time Directive. Predictably, the Daily Mail reported this as a ‘lurch to the left’ . It looks to me more like a lurch towards common sense. The 48 hour limit on average weekly working time is justified by a wealth of scientific [...]

Filed under: Working time | 1 Comment »

There is no doubt that the credit crunch has squeezed most of the life out of the mortgage market, but are house prices really falling as fast as the lenders say? The answer is ‘no’, and this is because a significant minority of houses are actually bought without credit and therefore do not show up [...]

Filed under: Housing | Comments Off