Give us a break!
The CAB service’s case for a Fair Employment Agency
Executive summary
In December 2010, the Employment Relations Minister, Edward Davey MP, announced a review of the Government’s existing workplace rights compliance and enforcement arrangements, to establish the scope for streamlining them and making them more effective” and, in particular, to look at the potential cost and operational benefits of enforcement models that would consolidate enforcement functions in a single body”.
Citizens Advice warmly welcomes this review, and the opportunity it provides to build on the progress to which the Minister refers. In this briefing – which represents our formal submission to the review, and which is endorsed by the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), the Fawcett Society, Gingerbread, Homeworkers Worldwide, the Law Centres Federation, Legal Action Group (LAG), Maternity Action, Oxfam, and Working Families – we reiterate our case, first made a decade ago, for consolidating the enforcement bodies that lie behind the Pay and Work Rights Helpline into a single Fair Employment Agency fit for the challenges of the 21st Century.
Through the application of a proactive, intelligence-led and proportionate approach to the enforcement of all those statutory workplace rights that are amenable to such an approach, including the right to paid holiday, a single Fair Employment Agency would simplify the enforcement framework and enhance the protection of vulnerable workers. But it would also provide better value to the taxpayer, both through greater organisational efficiency and by reducing the number of potential employment tribunal claims. And, by targeting the rogues who profit from exploitation, it would help secure the fair competitive environment – or ‘level playing field’ – that is quite rightly sought by good employers, employment agencies and labour providers.
Podcast on rights to paid holiday
Listen to information about rights to paid holiday. Click on the button below and the spoken information will play straight away and last about 3 minutes.