From the Herald, today:

The Labour Party which is the favourite to form the next UK government has pledged to ban ‘exploitative’ zero hours contracts as their use hit record levels in Scotland, the Herald on Sunday can reveal.

Official figures reveal that the average number of Scots on zero-hours contracts has soared to an average of 100,000 in the past year – a 42% rise on 2019, the year before the pandemic.

According to Statista, there are around 1.2 million zero hours workers across the UK. The Scottish rate is now exactly the same as in the rest of the UK, after 14 years of Tory rule which Labour have committed to following.

Will Labour really ban zero hours contracts? What do you think?

Labour is facing criticism over plans for a loophole that would allow employees to work under zero-hours contracts, despite the party having pledged to ban them entirely. Keir Starmer’s party is preparing to announce details of its promise to overhaul workers’ rights if it gets into power – a centrepiece of its early plans for government, but subject to fierce lobbying from businesses.

Labour has repeatedly promised to ban zero-hours contracts, under which an employer is not obliged to provide any minimum number of working hours. But as part of its revised plans, although employers would be required to offer a contract based on regular hours worked, workers could opt to stay on zero hours. The move has triggered fears of a power imbalance that employers could exploit to pressure workers into accepting insecurity around pay and working hours. The IWGB union, which represents gig economy workers, said they feared anything less than an outright ban on the practice would leave scope for exploitation.

“Workers are often forced to accept poor conditions and precarious contracts across sectors due to desperation and extreme power imbalances between employers and employees in the UK,” the union’s general secretary, Henry Chango Lopez, said. “This power imbalance would persist under these new proposals.”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/may/01/labours-new-deal-for-workers-will-not-fully-ban-zero-hours-contracts

What about that other measure of progressive politics – the real living wage?

A record proportion of employees in Scotland are being paid the real Living Wage (rLW) or more, new figures reveal.

The Office for National Statistics’ Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings shows 91% of employees aged 18 and over earned at least the rLW in 2022, an increase from 85.5% in 2021 and the highest proportion since the rLW series began in 2012.

In comparison, 87.5% of employees aged 18 and over in England are paid the rLW or more, 88.2% in Wales and 85.4% in Northern Ireland.

The ONS survey also confirms that the Gender Pay Gap is lower in Scotland than across the UK as a whole. For full-time employees the gap is 3.7% compared with the UK figure of  8.3%. https://www.gov.scot/news/scotland-leads-on-the-real-living-wage/

Scottish Labour?

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has confirmed that not all workers at his family’s wholesale business are currently paid the real living wage. His party wants to introduce new minimum rates of pay linked to the cost of living as part of its “new deal for workers”.

Mr Sarwar….told BBC Scotland’s The Sunday Show it would have to start paying Labour’s “genuine living wage” if his party wins the general election.

Other parties accused him of “hypocrisy” over the policy. Labour has not set out precisely what rate it would introduce but it backs a “minimum wage taking account of the cost of living”.

Mr Sarwar waived his right to benefit from his family’s firm in 2017 after becoming an MSP. He confirmed not all staff at the firm were paid the Living Wage Foundation’s real living wage rate, but said that they would receive a cost of living-linked rate of pay if Sir Keir Starmer becomes prime minister. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cyxx8d0l948o#:~:text=The%20real%20living%20wage%20hourly,of%20their%201997%20election%20manifesto.