2m exploited Britains

The report 'Hard Work, Hidden Lives', released recently by the TUC's Commission on Vulnerable Employment finds more than two million people in Britain are forced to endure 'intolerably poor working lives' like daily exploitation and abuse from employers. Employment practices which take advantage of vulnerable workers have been found to be commonplace, despite a raft of regulations to protect people from mistreatment. Why is so little being done??

Photo; view of Stroud

Certain industries suffer disproportionately - unsurprisingly they include hotel and catering, hairdressing and beauty and construction and security as being those most at risk. People in these industries are frequently paid below minimum income for the hours they work, as they are often employed on a casual basis and are less likely to be in a trade union.

As Jean Lambert, Green MEP said in response to the report: "There is a clear need for greater inspection to ensure that workers are being given reasonable paid holiday, decent wages and that their work allows them to maintain a healthy work-life balance. When unscrupulous employers provide poorer work conditions they can undercut responsible employers and this leads to lower standards across industry sectors. This must not go on. The legal framework is failing to protect some of those most at risk of exploitation, including young people, foreign workers and agency workers who have no other prospects for employment. Anti-poverty targets will be undermined unless the Government gets to grips with this widespread problem."

At least the Government has done a U-turn on the 10% tax rate - outrageous that they could even consider it - as George Monbiot writes in The Guardian today: "Labour has shifted taxation from the rich to the poor, cutting corporation tax from 33% to 28% and capital gains tax from 40% to 18%, and introducing a new entrepreneurs' relief scheme, taxing the first million of capital gains at just 10%. It tried to raise the income tax paid by the poorest earners from 10% to 20%. Labour has lifted the inheritance tax threshold from £300,000 to £700,000, and maintained the cap on the highest rates of council tax. While vigorously prosecuting benefits cheats, it has allowed tax avoidance, mostly by the very rich, to reach an estimated £41bn. Inequality today is slightly worse than it was when Labour took power in 1997 (the Gini coefficient which measures it has risen from 0.33 to 0.35)."