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 us all in many ways. Shamefully, we also have the largest gender pay gap in the EU, and two thirds of low paid workers are women, meaning poverty in the UK has a female face. Thousands of people are known not to be receiving even the minimum wage of £5.80. And yet poverty experts report that a single adult, working full time, needs to earn at least £6.88 an hour to reach the most basic weekly standard of living; and much more in cities like London.

In 2010, this is a sad state of affairs. Those who did the least to cause the current recession are suffering the most. That’s why the TUC, along with 14 other organisations, has joined the Fair Pay Network to call upon all prospective parliamentary candidates in the 2010 general election to pledge to act in support of those receiving poverty pay in their constituency by endorsing five urgent asks:

The Candidate’s pledge: Fast Forward to Fairness

1. Safeguard the poorest: I commit to support an annual increase of the National Minimum Wage in real terms; to encourage the independence of the Low Pay Commission and to support a meaningful increase in resources for NMW enforcement
2. Spend our money ethically: I commit to actively encourage and support my local authority in the introduction of ‘living wage clauses’ in every single public procurement contract that it awards to private contractors.
3. Learn from the best: I pledge to follow the example of employers like London Olympics 2012, Barclays and KPMG and generate employer interest in and support initiatives to introduce living wage policies in the public, private and third sectors as soon as possible.
4. End discrimination: I commit to actively encourage the government to strengthen laws relating to pay discrimination on the grounds of gender, race and disability by requiring all organisations to publish pay audits showing pay rates for men and women, including ethnicity and disability, at all levels.
5. Public Sector in the Vanguard: I commit to parliamentary activity to root out low pay in the public sector in which almost a quarter of all low-paid jobs reside.

You can help out too. Check out the video that explains a bit more about the campaign, and visit the Fairness Pledge 2010 website to lobby your candidates now.

And please pass the message on to your friends and colleagues – or even people you don’t like and hardly know (here are the Twitter and Facebook links!). This election could be a real chance to get fair pay on the political agenda.

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 quarters about the 5% duty put on the sale of homes worth more than £1 million. But just how many of us will have to pay the extra duty? According to new figures published today by the Land Registry for England and Wales, there were 73,889 house sales completed in December 2009, of which 498 were valued at more than £1 million – 0.7% of sales. So the new 5% duty really is just taxing the very wealthiest.

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 to bear a disproportionate part of the cost of the economic mess created by super-rich city bankers, what we have here is a clear case of the sum of individual wisdom adding up to collective foolishness. Of course some employers don’t want to pay their staff more, but they certainly all want their customers to spend more. In fact, minimum wage workers are most likely to spend 100% of any pay increase, thus generating a modest fiscal boost to the economy.

Today the Government announced that the minimum wage would increase from £5.80 to £5.93 in October (+2.2%).  Average pay settlements are currently running at about 1.9%, but we expect this figure to increase by October in response to inflation.

In short, the minimum wage increase is close to the average wage increase across the economy, so the LPC has been cautious – but you would not think so to see the response from some industry leaders.

Here’s the Director-general of the British Retail Consortium:

“This increase is downright irresponsible. It’s at odds with Government promises of prudence and public sector freezes and will damage retailers’ ability to maintain and create jobs… it’s sheer madness to be forcing new costs on this scale on to retailers and their suppliers.”

Here’s the director of policy at the British Chambers of Commerce:

“A near-doubling on last year’s increase is … astounding. Combined with next year’s rise in employer National Insurance contributions, a minimum wage that’s a one-way bet could stop some businesses taking on new workers.”

Of course, the truth is that the Low Pay Commission, which includes three representatives from business including the CBI, looked at the economy very carefully and made a modest recommendation. To paraphrase Michael Winner – calm down, it’s only an extra 13 pence!

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 bank holiday called ‘Community Day’, on the last Monday in October (i.e. it would be today if we had it this year) to celebrate volunteering and encourage people to take part in community events.

We think the new holiday should be introduced in 2012 to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the London Olympics and Paralympics with a fanfare to seal a triumphant year for volunteers across the UK. Here’s a joint letter we’ve sent to the press:

Monday (26^th October) marks the halfway point between the August and Christmas bank holidays. We would like this four month gap to be broken with a new Community Day bank holiday in late October.

Over the last two years the recession has hit communities across the UK. When times are tough people look to friends, families and their local community for support.

Community spirit is a long standing and unsung British tradition. Millions of people across the UK volunteer and take part in community activities every week. Surveys show that volunteering contributes significantly to the UK economy, boosts people’s wellbeing, prevents isolation and makes them happy too.

We believe these efforts should be recognised, encouraged and celebrated. 2012 marks the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the London Olympics and Paralympics – events only possible thanks to volunteers. This would be the perfect year to introduce a new Community Day bank holiday.

Yours,

Brendan Barber, TUC General Secretary
Dame Elisabeth Hoodless, Executive Director, Community Service Volunteers
Kevin Curley, Chief Executive, National Association for Voluntary and Community Action
Justin Davis Smith, Chief Executive, Volunteering England
Stuart Etherington, Chief Executive, The National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO)

The TUC’s Brendan Barber said:

“Communities across the UK have been hit hard by the recession. When times are tough, people look to their friends, family and local communities for support. Millions of people support their local communities every week in some way or other and this work should be properly recognised and encouraged.

“With the Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympics to look forward to, 2012 is set to be a vintage year for volunteering. A new Community Day bank holiday would be the perfect way to celebrate the nation’s achievements and encourage more people to volunteer.”

Dame Elisabeth Hoodless of UK volunteering charity CSV said:

“Volunteers raise reading levels, help patients to eat, tackle child abuse by supporting families and reduce levels of crime. We know that two thirds of the thousands of people who volunteer every October for Make a Difference Day have never volunteered before and that two thirds of those who try it out go on to volunteer again. It’s clear there is untapped energy out there.”

“Eleven million people tell researchers they would volunteer if somebody asked them.  A Community Day bank holiday would help to attract even more people to give time to benefit others.”

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 a day when the London Weather Centre had issued a warning to people to stay at home unless their journey was absolutely necessary.

This strikes me as being an example of old fashioned macho management. Employers who fail to recognise that workers may be in serious danger during severe weather will at best lose the respect of their workers and at worst may bear some liability if they bully workers into trying to get to work in extreme conditions. Decent employers simply do not behave in this way.

The TUC has just published some advice on dealing with bad weather, including a model policy for employers – go to: www.tuc.org.uk/law/tuc-15932-f0.cfm for more details … and have a safe journey home tonight.

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.

Actually this judgement is mainly about shoring up existing good practice. The vast majority of employers in the UK already give their workers a set amount of annual leave that is unaffected by sickness absence during the year. Most employers also pay the full value of untaken holidays to workers who leave their employment due to sickness absence.

The judgement will only really make a difference to those whose sickness absence takes them up to the end of the leave year. These workers may now be due for holiday pay rather than sick pay for a couple of extra weeks. In many cases, this will have no cost to employers as they have contracted to pay the full rate for holidays.

Some employers will have to pay a little bit more in such cases, but isn’t it right that this small group of workers who are already suffering from ill-health should be protected from losing out on their entitlement to the minimum legal holiday pay?

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 the UK could manage OK if the opt-outs ended. Here are some key facts:

• Ireland phased in the 48 hour week – this was followed by an economic boom – no problems there;
• long hours are associated with low productivity though fatigue and loss of concentration;
• ….and with poor work organisation and lack of investment in machinery, technology and training;
• long hours are associated with health problems, sickness absence and accidents; and
• long hours simply squeeze out the possibility of lifelong learning.

surely we could move away from the long hours culture without too much trouble if the opt-outs were phased out. This would not take effect until at least 2012 – economy booming again by then, i hope.

Evidence based policy

‘There was no sign that the extent of sustained long hours working was systematically associated with the business and financial needs of workplaces … workplaces have organisational choice and are able to reduce the need for sustained long hours should they choose to do so’ [i]

‘With the WTD only aiming to limit the working week to an average of 48 hours, it would seem to us that there is plenty of scope for particularly long hours to be reduced without encountering the problems that these economies are facing. Consequently we are not convinced of the necessity of maintaining the opt-out’ [ii]

[i] ‘The Business Context of Long Hours Working’, T. Hogarth, W.W.Daniel, A.P. Dickerson, D.Campbell, M. Winterbotham, D. Vivian, University of Warwick Institute for Employment Research, DTI Employment Relations Series 23, November 2003, p9.

[ii] House of Commons Trade and Industry Select Committee Report #7, ‘Labour Market Flexibility and Employment Regulation’, March 2005, paras 64/63. www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmtrdind/90/9002.htm

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 working time. If the EP supports this view, and the TUC hopes that they will do, then we can expect votes in the European Parliament in December and a process of consultation between the EP and the Social affairs Council of Ministers in late January 2009.

The UK Government has tried to portray the opt-outs as being about the right to work. In my view this position ignores the facts, which are that:

• excessive working time is a serious risk to health in all occupations, and also a risk to safety in some occupations;
• most long hours workers want to reduce their working time;
• most long hours are not paid for their overtime hours; and
• many workers say that they were put under pressure to sign away their rights by their employers.

The TUC’s case is very strong. The Working Time Directive was introduced to protect workers from the health and safety hazards of excessive working time. Sadly, the opt-out has effectively neutered the directive in the UK, leaving us with 3.3 million employees (12.9%) regularly working more than 48 hours [1]. A further sign that the directive is not currently working as it should do is the fact that the number of long hours workers increased by 150,000 last year. As a result, excessive working time remains a serious problem, with far too many UK workers still falling prey to heart disease, stress related illness and unnecessary accidents [2]. It is therefore vital that the 48 hour limit is fully applied as quickly as possible.

It will certainly not be enough just to add more legal conditions to the use of the opt-out because the UK’s enforcement regime is very weak. Workers seeking to enforce their rights must make a complaint to one of a number of government agencies, depending on which industry they work in. However, the government has told these agencies that working time complaints must be a low priority and that there must be no proactive enforcement. In some cases, local enforcement agencies do not even know that they are responsible for enforcing the regulations, whilst the main Health and Safety Executive has been reported to turn down working time complaints unless workers have been injured or killed [3]. Since the Government agencies are the only way to enforce the 48 hour week, the net result is that workers often cannot enforce their rights even when their case is supported by a trade union.

It is also the case those most long hours workers want to reduce their hours [4]. Indeed, most of those who work excessive hours do not get paid for their extra time and so have nothing to lose from a more robust limit on working time. There is also a body of evidence that shows that many employers put pressure on their workers to sign the opt-out [5].

Notes:

[5] Abuse is documented in official studies as well the evidence provided by trade unions. Cases of abuse are reported in Barnard, Deakin and Hobbs, Ibid; Neathy F and Arrowsmith J, ‘Implementation of the Working Time Regulations’, Employment Research Series 11, DTI 2001; and Neathy, ERRS 19, ‘Implementation of the Working Time Regulations: follow up study’, DTI, 2003. The incidence of abuse is measured in a UK Government sponsored study carried out by BRMB Social Research, ‘A survey of workers’ experiences of the Working Time Regulations’, DTI Employment Relations Research Series No.31, November 2004, pps 25-29. The latter report found that just 28 per cent of UK long hours workers (eg those working more than 48 hours per week) know that there is a 48-hour limit; 23 per-cent of long hours workers who have not signed an opt-out say that they have experienced employer pressure to work long hours; and 50% of issues raised about the 48 hour week by workers are not resolved

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 statements on their website do indicate that they plan to create more jobs by removing “red tape”.

However, do let me know if there is anything that should lead us to be more optimistic about Conservative plans for the minimum wage and employment legislation in general, as I want to be scrupulously fair.

Would the Conservative approach work? On the most important point, we are all keen to ensure that there will be sufficient jobs in the economy, but it defies belief to think that the UK’s current problems are caused by over-regulation. The absolute reverse is true in the finance sector, and when it comes to employment, the problem now is clearly falling consumer demand, not over-regulation. Trying to create employment by cutting regulation would be like pushing at Keynes’ piece of string – a very ineffective prescription indeed.

In terms of how political parties are perceived, perhaps I could just venture the opinion say that it seems to me that the Conservatives are really missing a trick here. surely one of their key goals must be to get away from the “Nasty Party” image, and that aim is not helped at all by letting it be known that they are thinking about freezing the minimum wage.

So come on Conservatives, its time to really embrace the minimum wage. Why not make a clear statement that you intend to keep the Low Pay Commission and take its independent advice on the level of the minimum wage? Its the right thing to do and it would be popular as well.

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 why the TUC is campaigning to make the last Monday of October the new Community Day bank holiday.

Find out more about the Community Day campaign -   www.communityday.org.uk

What we have in mind is a celebration of voluntary and community activity that will involve both national events and local community fairs that will allow community groups, charities, sports clubs, youth groups, unions and everybody else working for local people can set out their stalls.

To get the tone of Community Day, imagine a cross between the millennium celebrations and red nose day. In short, we will be giving a boost to community organisation whilst having a good time.

All the voluntary and community umbrella groups are behind the proposal and we are lobbying the main political parties to get the idea adopted.

Now you may be thinking at this point “well that’s quite a nice idea, but isn’t it just pie in the sky to think about a new bank holiday at a time when the economy is under threat?”.

The beauty of Community day is that it would not be drain on the economy. There are three main reasons:

• businesses that trade on bank holidays, such as the leisure, tourism and retail sectors have their best days of the year. This group adds up to nearly a million businesses – just under 1 in 4 UK enterprises.
• Community Day would also bring further economic benefits to the UK through increased volunteering. The TUC estimates that this could be worth up to £500 million per year.
• Employee involvement in volunteering also creates personnel benefits for employers in terms of enhanced skills, networking and fitness

The net result is that if Community Day were to be introduced during the current slowdown, providing that all the planning had been done to in good time, it would actually be cost-neutral in economic terms.

However, if the Government does adopt Community Day – and why would they not adopt a proposal that has the support of more than 90% of voters – then we will need at least a year to prepare for a national event of this scale. It follows that the earliest realistic date for launching Community Day will be October 2010, by which time the UK economy should be growing strongly again.

We’ve all worked hard during the last few years so its time to get something back. Let’s get the decision to have Community Day made now. We will still have to wait a couple of years before we can enjoy the new holiday, but at least we will have something to look forward to.

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 evidence that regularly working long hours is bad for your health. The mains risks are heart disease and stress related illness

I don’t think that you have to be very far to the left of the political spectrum in order to agree that it is a bad idea for individuals to be allowed to opt-out of health and safety law – that way lies dangerous anarchy.

‘But shouldn’t the TUC ‘s role be to help people to work as long as they want?’, I hear you ask.

First, according to the official Labour Force Survey, more than three quarters of long hours workers say that they want to reduce their working time: second, more than two thirds of this work is unpaid; and – most importantly – there is absolutely no point in earning a massive wage packet this week if you are going to end up in hospital next week as a result of overwork.

If you are still not convinced, why not dip into these reports? The DTI paper shows how we could improve productivity while moving away from excessive working time:

• ‘Working Long Hours’, Beswick and White, Health and Safety Executive, 2003 http://www.hse.gov.uk/research/hsl_pdf/2003/hsl03-02.pdf
• ‘Managing change: Practical Ways to Reduce Long hours and Reform working Parctices’, DTI, 2005 http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file14239.pdf

No doubt these are these are the kind of evidence-based arguments that the European Parliament will look at when it return to the issue in the Autumn.

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 in the lenders’ surveys.

Of course, this does not help those of us who are struggling to get a mortgage, but these non-credit transactionsare quite important, because these players are still in the market and they are actually slowing the fall in house prices. An estate agent friend of mine has sold two flats in a single development on the south coast last month to people who were able to pay in full because they had inherited their parents’ homes.

But we still need urgent action to improve the availabilty of credit. Quarterly figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders for the spring quarter show the lowest number of new loans approved since 1974. To give you an idea of the sclale of the problem, here are the loan figures for some key years, including the 1991 recession, which was the last time that house prices were falling. The figures are in thousands:

1974 – 84

1981 -198

1991 – 185

1997 – 288

2007 – 273

2008 - 148

It is a little known fact that 3 out of 10 adults are part of a household that owns their home  outright (Source: Labour Force Survey). Leaving aside the idle rich for a moment, complete ownership is most common among retired people, but 18 per cent of employees also own their own homes outright.

There a number of reasons why some people are able buy houses without a mortgage. Of course one of them is being very rich, but there are also a large number of pensioners who are trading down to a smaller property, and, as my estate agent friend has discovered, a significant number of people with inheritances.

What difference does this make to House Prices? The Halifax House Price Index is showing a 10.9 per cent price fall over the last year in the price of mortgaged properties. In contrast, the Land Registry, which keeps a record of all completed house sales in England and Wales only shows a 2.0 per cent fall. In Scotland,  the position is slightly better, with the Registers of the Scotland Executive Agency recording a fall of just 1.7 per cent.

It is still hard to see how house prices can start to recover before the economy starts to turn up, and there is more credit available but we should resist succumbing to gloom.

If you have a mortgage, hang on if you can, because the current problems won’t last too long. If you want to buy, the optimum time will probably be the second half of 2009, because in my view prices will start to rise again by 2010.

The debate on flexible working and homeworking has been hotting up this week. The CBI’s Autumn Economic Statement, which was published on Monday, argues that there has been a huge increase in homeworking in recent years. However, according to the official Labour Force Survey, there has been some increase in the number of employees who can work from home but it has been relatively modest.

why the discrepancy? It looks like the CBI survey simply asked whether employers offer homeworking to any of their staff. So any company that lets its senior managers work from home answered “yes”. Unfortunately this doesn’t really tell us much about the reality of access to homeworking.

Why has the CBI over-claimed? Probably because it wants to argue against the extension of the “right to request flexible working” on the grounds that good employers are already doing the right thing.

The problem is that this would leave those who are employed by old-fashioned, inflexible companies with no way of improving their working lives except by  looking for another job.

This matters, because there is still a big mismatch between what workers want and what they actually get. Another government survey shows that18 per cent of employees would like to work from home some of the time, but cannot do so at the moment. In addition, a further 20 per cent want to work flexi-time.

I should say here that employers’ organisations deserve real credit for actively promoting flexible working and homeworking. Indeed, both the CBI and the British Chambers of Commerce are working with the TUC in WorkWiseUK – http://www.workwiseuk.org/- which is promoting the mutual benefits of smarter, more flexible working.

The trouble is that you can’t do everything through education and spreading best practice. There are quite a lot of employers bumping along on the bottom when it comes to employment practices. Some simply don’t know any better, but far too many are determined to get as much work as possible from their workers for as little as they can get away with.

It follows that we have to legislate to ensure that workers are fairly treated even if they are working for a complete bonehead - and there really is no other way of flexibilising completely inflexible bosses. But legislation does not need to be “red tape”. I believe that if we do it right then the law will have no impact at all on the majority of firms who are already doing the right thing.