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The writer is an author and broadcaster specializing in how we live and work. Her latest book is ‘Working Assumptions’ and she is co-presenter The Office of Nowhere podcast.
In a word cloud about Labour’s early days in government, the word “work” would feature prominently, probably after “change.” “Keir Starmer’s work to rebuild the UK begins,” the new prime minister posted on X. “I’m ready to get to work,” wrote Rachel Reeves, the new chancellor.
At a time when work and workplaces are undergoing significant global changes, the rhetoric is designed to showcase both a work-hard attitude and the importance of rebalancing employment on the new government’s agenda.
Ironically, the biggest impediment to success may be a failure in the way government itself works – a departmental approach that can deal with the issue in isolation and in isolation from other policy areas. Now that it has control of the levers of power, Labour must figure out how to use them. Moving from a granular mindset to a granular mindset will be key.
The Labour Party, as its name suggests, believes in work. Employment The bill, included in the King’s speech, aims to tackle poor pay and working conditions and strengthen workers’ rights. King Charles highlighted “a new partnership with both business and workers”.
Labour understands that work is central to the nation’s wellbeing. Its commitments emphasise mental health and skills, with the announcement of Skills England, which will oversee training. Although no AI Bill was tabled, this is a government that wants to defend human jobs in an increasingly automated age. We are unlikely to see Starmer smiling helplessly alongside Elon Musk as Rishi Sunak did at the UK’s AI Security Summit, when the tech entrepreneur declared that “there will come a time when no jobs will be needed at all”.
But job creation and protection is a complex dance between government departments. It requires departments such as education, business and HMRC to work together to sort out issues such as tax arrangements for self-employment and childcare so that people can make the most of their work.
So far, the Labour Party’s approach is reminiscent of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal (the massive job creation and economic stimulus project that responded to the Great Depression of the 1930s) and perhaps of the Disney song Heigh-Ho, which captures the spirit of work in the same period. Its plan to “make work pay” is even titled “Delivering a New Deal for Working People”.
At the time of FDR’s New Deal, almost 25 percent of the American workforce was unemployed. Today, a fifth of the UK’s working-age population (9 million people) are “economically inactive”: they are not unable to find work, but simply not looking for it because, as the Labour Party believes, work does not pay.
The Labour Party’s plan to merge the new National Job Centres with jobcentres is a good idea to tackle this problem. Young and old should look for work together; if you don’t know how exhausting jobcentres are now, I’ll just tell you that they have changed little from those depicted in the 1980s play Boys from the Blackstuff, now being revived in London’s West End.
Other ways forward might involve looking back: specifically, to 2017. Taylor’s review of modern working practicesIdentifying the impact of the platform economy on work, he warned against “one-sided flexibility” in employment law and recommended that a “dependent contractor” category be applied to workers who had rights but were not employees. Much of Labour’s policy mirrors Taylor, although it is unclear what some reforms, including those to employment categories affecting independent workers, will look like in practice.
Several departments should think about this: education, health, science, transport, housing, business and, of course, labour. They should not operate independently of each other. The Taylor Report argued for a “British way” of doing good work. If you want grandiosity, that is a good way of putting it. If the UK can balance the needs of workers with the imperatives of employers, it will be creating a world-class model.
But to do a good job requires a rigorous reorganisation of who does what and a reassessment of where everything “sits” in government. The Department of Business and Trade was called the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy when the Taylor Review was commissioned. It should be renamed the Department of Business, Trade and Employment.
Our new government clearly means business when it promises that “national renewal begins now.” But after the rhetoric comes the reality. The hard work of breaking down silos will underpin its success.