Over several decades, I’ve seen the comings and goings of numerous governments, and one thing that I always find fascinating is the cyclic nature of politics. The newly elected Labour parties manifesto includes a wide-ranging program for workplace reform, frankly, much of which is entirely reasonable. The program will be based to a large degree on the recommendations of the Taylor Review from way back in 2017, which was commissioned by the Conservative Prime Minister of the time,Teressa May; only a small number of Taylors recommendations were adopted by the subsequent conservative governments.
A major element of the proposed reforms will be to end the confusion that currently exists around our three-tier system for employment status. At the moment at one end of the scale we have employees, at the opposite end we have the genuinely self-employed, and much of the confusion comes from the status of a worker, who sits in the middle. The Labour governments plan to remove “Worker Status” from the middle ground to leave us with the traditional two designations. However, as ridiculous as it sounds, we won’t have “employee and self-employed”; the proposed designations will be “worker and self-employed”. So no chance of confusing the new system with the arrangements they are trying to replace then?! And the role of worker that has caused all of the confusion in the first place! Which was introduced as part of the 1998 Working Time Directive, adopted by the New Labour Government of Tony Blair who came into power in 1997. Oh the Irony!
Labour Manifesto
https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/MakeWorkPay.pdf
*Image taken from Kier Starmer's personal X account.
