From Good Work to Fair Work: Closing the Gap between Rights and Reality
Employment rights have long been the battlefield on which political differences are most visibly fought. From the abolition of imprisonment for breach of contract, through the Equal Pay, Sex Discrimination and Race Relations Acts of the 1970s, to the Disability Discrimination Act of the 1990s, each extension of protection has attracted familiar criticisms. The arguments have remained remarkably consistent over the past two centuries: cost to business, disruption to the workplace, and, more recently, anxieties around immigration and cultural identity; plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Predictably, many of these objections have come from more economically abstentionist political traditions, most prominently the Conservative Party.
There is a “but” there.
While Conservative governments have frequently resisted or sought to limit the expansion of employment protections, there are very few instances in which they have sought to dismantle them once established.
The pattern, I think, is best viewed over a post-industrial timeline. The punitive regime of the 19th century Master and Servant laws, under which workers could be imprisoned (often with hard labour) for breach of contract, represents a sensible starting point in which the objections of abstentionists were loudly articulated. Even then, though, Conservatives played a role in softening the harshest edges of employment conditions.
The Factory Acts imposed limits on working hours and restricted child labour, while the Truck Acts required that wages be paid in cash rather than in kind. These measures weren’t a paean for egalitarian idealism (let’s not get crazy) so much as a concern for social stability, but they did mark an early recognition that the employment relationship required legal constraint.
That pattern continued. The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 created a comprehensive framework for workplace safety that remains in force today. More recently, Conservative-led governments introduced the National Living Wage and expanded family rights through shared parental leave. These were not revolutionary measures, but they demonstrate a willingness to engage with, and at times extend, the framework of worker protection.
The same continuity is visible in more recent policy development. The commissioning of Matthew Taylor’s 2017 review of modern working practices is a laudable recognition that rights are useless unless they’re enforced.
The disruption of 2020 bumped the Good Work Plan off the agenda but the underlying logic has endured. The creation of the Fair Work Agency continues and, in many respects, completes the ambition of that enterprise.
A single enforcement body, combining the functions of multiple regulators and moving from a reactive, complaints-based system to one of proactive inspection and investigation, represents a structural shift in how employment rights are realised.
It is, as the oft quoted Nigel Farage described it, another layer of “red tape” or, in more formal terms from the Reform Party manifesto, “excessive regulation.”
For most of the rest of us, though it’s a good plan to achieve a fairer society.
Enforcement, however inconvenient it may be to employers, is what gives rights substance.
Media, social and otherwise, never tires and actually thrives on highlighting areas of disagreement but the Fair Work Agency is a reminder that there will always be more that unites us than divides us. If we really want to create a fairer society, the starting point must be the protection of everyone who gives their time and labour to make the whole thing work.
Callum MacLeod, MD