Transcript Jobs and Austerity - UWS Oxfam Partnership

Labour market trends and policy,
Scotland 2015
Stephen Boyd, STUC
UWS-Oxfam Partnership, Policy Forum
25 March 2015
Decent Work?
PART 1
THE EMPLOYMENT BOOM?
Scottish Labour Market 2015
• Relatively high employment (though yet to
achieve pre-recession rate), falling
unemployment (though still 50k above prerecession level)
• Workers less likely to be full-time/employees
• More likely to be part-time, temporary, selfemployed, under-employed
• Rapid increase in insecure forms of work (but
poor information!)
• Unprecedented sustained collapse in median
wage
Employees, self-employed (000s),
Scotland, 2007-2014
2,280
310
2,260
300
2,240
290
2,220
2,200
280
2,180
270
2,160
2,140
260
2,120
250
2,100
2,080
240
Employees (LH axis)
self-employed (RH axis)
Full-time, part-time jobs (000s),
Scotland, 2007-2014
1,950
700
1,900
680
1,850
660
1,800
640
1,750
620
1,700
600
1,650
580
Full-time (LH axis)
Part-time (RH axis)
Underemployment, Scotland, 2004-2013
300,000
250,000
200,000
150,000
100,000
50,000
0
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
Change in employment rate (%) by age
group, Scotland, 2004-2014
90.0
80.0
70.0
60.0
50.0
40.0
30.0
20.0
10.0
0.0
16-24
25 - 34
35 - 49
50 - 64
65+
Real median wage (gross weekly earnings adjusted by both CPI
and RPI inflation) by gender and job type, Scotland, 2009-2014
In employment on a zero-hour
contract, UK, 2000-2014
800
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014 (1) 2014 (2)
Percentage of people in employment
on a zero-hour contract
3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0
UK2
England
N East
N West
Y&H
E Mid
W Mid
East
London
South East
South
West
Wales
Scotland
Employees feeling tense, worried, uneasy ‘all’, ‘most’ or
‘some’ of the time by usual weekly working hours (%),
WERS 2011
Spend (% of GDP) on active labour
market programmes, 2001-2011
1.8
1.6
1.4
EU (28 countries)
1.2
Denmark
Germany
1
Netherlands
Austria
0.8
Finland
Sweden
0.6
United Kingdom
0.4
0.2
0
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
REMARKABLE SURGE IN WOMEN’S
EMPLOYMENT
Change in 16-64yrs employment rate
(%), Nov-Jan 2013 to Nov-Jan 2015
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
NE
NW
Y&H
EM
WM
East
Men
Women
London
SE
SW
Wales
Scot
16-64 years employment rate by
gender, Scotland, 1992-2015
85.0
80.3%,
2007
80.0
76.5%,
1992
76.0%,
2015
75.0
70.0
70.2%,
2008
65.0
60.0
61.5%,
1992
55.0
50.0
Men
Women
72.2%
2015
PART 2
LABOUR MARKET POLICY
Diverging approaches
Coalition
• Promote and extend flexibility of UK model
• Widen asymmetries of economic power; anti
workplace democracy
Scottish Government
• Social partnership
• Fair Work
• Living Wage
• Working Together Review
• Cabinet Secretary for Fair Work, Skills and Training
Programme for Government
“We [also] need to make sure that those in
work get fairly rewarded…A thriving economy
depends on well-motivated, better paid
workers. Our strong support for business and
our measures to reduce inequality go hand in
hand. Our society will be all the fairer and more
successful when we end the blight of low pay”.
Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister, November 2014
Programme for Government
Commitments
• Range of measures to ‘expand the living
wage’
• Publish statutory guidance by end 2015 on
how workforce-related matters should be
taken into account in public contracts
• Gender balance on boards
• Business Pledge
Fair Work Convention
• “will be a powerful advocate of the
partnership approach which characterises
industrial relations in Scotland at their best”
• “will prioritise the role of the Living Wage and
develop a Fair Work Framework for Scotland”
Scotland’s Economic Strategy
• “Promote Fair Work and build a labour market
that provides sustainable and well-paid jobs”
• “Develop with key partners, such as business
organisations and trade unions, innovative
approaches to developing progressive workplace
practices”
• “Bringing more people into the labour market is
key to tackling poverty, inequality and social
deprivation and improving health and wellbeing”
Barriers
• Starting from a bad place: deeply entrenched asymmetries
of economic power (relatively low TU membership and
collective bargaining coverage)
• UK’s distinct model of shareholder capitalism (uniquely
febrile market for corporate control; poor corporate
governance etc)
• Lack of capacity in key institutions: social partners,
academia
• No tradition of social partnership
• Employer organisations: atomised, unrepresentative,
ideological, poorly resourced (no analytical capability
between them)
• Ownership and control too often beyond Scotland’s borders