The UK has seen an “explosion” in insecure, low-paid work in the past 14 years, according to a new report.
The TUC said its study had found that the number of people in insecure work had reached a record high of 4.1 million.
The analysis of official statistics shows the number of people in “precarious” employment – such as zero-hours contracts, low-paid self-employment and casual or seasonal work – increased by nearly 1 million between 2011 and 2023.
Over that period, the amount of insecure work had risen nearly three times faster than secure forms of employment, said the union organisation, which estimates that one in eight workers in the UK are now in precarious employment. The growth in insecure work since 2011 has been fuelled mainly by lower-paid sectors of the economy, said the report.
The TUC said the huge rise in insecure and low-paid work highlighted the need for boosting workers’ rights and making work pay.
Its general secretary, Paul Nowak, said: “We need a government that will make work pay, but over the last 14 years we have seen an explosion in insecure, low-paid work.
“The UK’s long experiment with a low-rights, low-wage economy has been terrible for growth, productivity and living standards. Real wages are still worth less than in 2008, and across the country people are trapped in jobs that offer little or no security.”
Ruth Wilkinson, head of policy at the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health, said: “Non-permanent work is increasingly associated with poor and difficult working conditions and exposes workers to health and safety risks.
“This is deplorable and something which needs to be addressed. There is a fundamental duty on businesses to protect the health and safety of all workers, regardless of their contractual status.”
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Nowak said that Labour’s “new deal for working people” was an “opportunity for a reset”. The opposition party’s plan includes bringing in a ban on zero-hours contracts and “fire and rehire” tactics as well as “introducing basic rights from day one to parental leave, sick pay, and protection from unfair dismissal”.
The plan also aims to strengthen the rights of employees from the first day of their employment with a company.
“As well as preventing workers from being treated like throwaway labour, it would stop good employers from being undercut by the bad,” Nowak said. “We must end the Conservatives’ race to the bottom on employment standards.”