The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 3rd March 2023
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 3rd March 2023
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Friday 24th February was National Artist Day in Thailand and the Feast Day of Saint Ethelbert of Kent. Both passed unnoticed in the UK – much like the Trade Union Congress’s annual Work Your Proper Hours Day (WYPHD), which was also on the same day. The event is part of the TUC’s “battle against long hours and excessive unpaid overtime”. This, as we will see, has not been a great success.
The TUC say that this is the day that workers actually start getting the wages they are due because of the huge amount of unpaid overtime carried out by a significant part of the workforce.
The TUC made the rousing call to “encourage workers to finish their shifts on time”. It also politely asked managers to “encourage and support staff by setting reasonable workloads and putting in place workplace policies to protect against burnout”. In detail, the TUC called on workers to “try to take a proper lunch break and leave on time”.
The TUC pointed out that: “Nobody minds putting in longer hours from time to time – staying late occasionally to get an urgent order out or a vital report finished,” but warns that: “The trouble is when unpaid overtime becomes a normalised part of work. Working time then squeezes family, friends, hobbies, sports and involvement in the wider community.” In too many jobs unpaid overtime is the norm, not the exception.
The TUC quantifies this by saying that 3.5 million people (about 12.5 per cent of the workforce) carried out unpaid overtime in 2022, averaging 7.4 unpaid hours per week, about an extra working day, resulting in £7,200 per year of unpaid wages. The TUC blames staff shortages in many industries, which result in an increased work intensity and pressure to work longer days.
The new General Secretary of the TUC, Paul Nowak, said: “Public sector workers put in more than eight million hours a week of unpaid overtime. They can’t keep going on gratitude alone. Staff are becoming burnt out and leaving their professions.
“The first step to fixing the recruitment crisis is to give our public sector staff the pay rises they have earned – and that they need to keep them out of foodbanks. This will help us hold on to the people keeping our schools, hospitals and other vital services running.
“Ministers must also set out plans to speed up recruitment to fill vacancies, so that the existing staff are not left working unpaid overtime to fill the gaps.”
Trade unions rarely prioritise specific demands for better staffing. At the local level in the private sector many workers welcome the chance of overtime, either for life’s little luxuries or, increasingly, simply to make ends meet. When the first Blair Government tossed a few peanuts to keep workers happy, one was a restriction of the number of hours bosses could expect workers to put in. At the time there was unexpected opposition from some shop-floor workers over concerns about overtime.
The TUC complains that one of the biggest offenders is the government, which has benefited from £8.6 billion worth of unpaid overtime from public sector workers who provide more than eight million hours each week of unpaid overtime. This might be however, because public sector workers are better organised than those in the private sector. It is not a problem for insecure workers who simply do not get paid when they get told not to come into work if their work-place is not busy.
The TUC’s figures (which cover England and Wales) show that unpaid overtime is worse in London, where 16.7 per cent of employees are involved. It is least common in the comparatively less well-off areas of Wales on 9.6 per cent and the North East with 8.8 per cent affected.
There is little difference between men and women with both doing the same, but women do slightly less than men with “only” seven hours as compared with 7.8 for men. As for BAME workers: they are less likely to work unpaid overtime than white workers (9.1 per cent for BAME workers compared with 13.1 per cent of white workers), but when they do, they do more 8.4 hours for BAME as opposed to 7.3 hours for white workers.
As far as the occupational breakdown is concerned, the group doing the most unpaid overtime is “Managers and Proprietors in Agriculture Related Services”, which is not really surprising as a farmer cannot clock off at 5pm when a new lamb is in the middle of making its appearance. Nearly a third of CEOs complain they work unpaid overtime. Teachers and Vets are both in the list of top 10 professions affected.
All these figures are based on the Office of National Statistics (OMS) figures, which are unlikely to understate the problem.
The TUC also notes that managers and directors also have the same complaint. In very high-paid jobs there is often an unspoken assumption that they will be on call at all hours. Some of the ‘work’ they do involves very important meetings that necessitate the consumption of smoked salmon in grand hotels. Workers further down the food chain should be the priority.
As is the custom the TUC blames Brexit for the problem, claiming it is the ending of EU law that is causing the problem – but this year’s WYPHD is the 19th such.
Workplace laws in Britain are excellent on paper but they have long been disregarded or unenforced, often due to gross underfunding that prevents essential inspections taking place. It is telling that even the Institute of Directors does not think it worth the effort to repeal the EU laws on which the TUC places so much faith.
Mind the Gap
The TUC also designated the previous day, Thursday 23rd, as Women’s Pay Day, which is the day when the average woman stops working for free compared with the average man. As with all averages, that milestone hides a multitude of differences. In some regions and industries that milestone has yet to be reached, with women effectively working for free for even longer.
At present this gender pay gap for all employees currently stands at 14.9 per cent, or in other words working women must wait 54 days, or nearly eight weeks, before they stop working for free on Women’s Pay Day this year.
Last year the date was the 25th February, so we are making progress. Since 2011 the gender pay gap has fallen by an average of just 0.4 percentage points per year. The TUC notes that at this current rate of progress, it will until 2044, 21 years from now, to achieve pay parity between men and women. Fabianism at its best.
The gap is worse for older women aged 50–59, who have the highest pay gap of 20.8 per cent and work the equivalent of 76 days for free, until Thursday 16th March. Those over 60 are slightly better off with a gender pay gap of 18.4 per cent, which means they work 67 days of the year for free. In contrast, it is next to non-existent for workers under 21 and is a tiny 3.9 per cent below 29 years of age.
This gap widens when babies come on the scene, and older women suffer from caring for older relatives as well as children and grandchildren.
The situation is worse in the South East (excluding London), where the gap is 17.9 per cent. Regional differences reflect in the types of jobs and industries that are most common in different regions.
Gender pay-gap reporting was made compulsory for large companies in 2017, but there are still big gender pay gaps in many industries. Pointing out something does not automatically make it better. Sectors dominated by female workers, such as education and healthcare, still have major gender pay gaps, largely due to women being in part-time jobs or in lower-paid roles.
Whilst the UK average is 14.9 per cent there are wide regional differences, from 17.9 per cent in the South East to 8.5 per cent in Northern Ireland. In Scotland it is 10 per cent and in Wales 12.3 per cent. The other regions in England range from 13.8 per cent on the North West to 17.5 per cent in the East of England.
Taking an occupation perspective, the gap is lowest in Accommodation and Food Services. No doubt this is due to low wages generally and so should be not be seen as a great triumph for the feminist cause. In Arts, Entertainment and Recreation, Transport, Public Administration, and Real Estate, amongst others, the gaps are below the average of 14.9 per cent, whilst it is above that level for the higher-paid sectors such as Construction, Professional, scientific and technical. In the larger sectors of education, health care and social work, the gender pay gap is 22.2 and 14 per cent respectively. It is worst of all at 31.2 per cent in finance and insurance.
Although these matters are important, the struggle for better wages and conditions should not be diverted into narrow cul-de-sacs. Whilst it matters that male and female plumbers get paid the same, and that proper child-care provisions are made, we should not get entangled in disputes over who gets paid what in the Boardroom. It doesn’t matter if workers get sacked by a White Oxbridge man or a Black woman from a redbrick business school – a fact that is all too easily forgotten in certain sectors of the labour movement for whom “equalities” is the be all and end of everything, even if it means equal poverty for all.
Paul Nowak pointed out: “Working women deserve equal pay. But at current rates of progress, it will take more than 20 years to close the gender pay gap. That's just not good enough. We can’t consign yet another generation of women to pay inequality.”
He added: “It’s clear that just publishing gender pay gaps isn’t working. Companies must be required to publish action plans to explain what steps they’ll take to close their pay gaps. And bosses who don’t comply with the law should be fined.”
A major issue is childcare and parental leave, which would help to narrow the gap. Nowak concluded: “We need ministers to fund childcare from the end of maternity leave to support working parents – along with better wages and recognition for childcare workers.
“And both parents need to be able to share responsibility for caring for their kids. Dads and partners need better rights to well-paid leave that they can take in their own right. Otherwise, mums will continue to take on the bulk of caring responsibilities – and continue to take the financial hit.”