The Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices
12 July 2017
The report includes recommendations for specific measures that the review panel would like to see enacted as soon as possible. It also makes the case for longer term strategic shifts and, overarching all of this, issues a call for us as a country to sign up to the ambition of all work being good work.
The key recommendations from the report are:
Clarity in law
- Develop legislation and guidance that adequately sets out the tests that need to be met to establish employee or dependent contractor status. This should retain the best elements of case law and better reflect the reality of modern day casual work in terms of the control exercised by employers over their staff.
- To reflect the realities of platform work, ensure that in developing legislation, legitimate business models that allow maximum flexibility to their dependent contractors are not prevented from operating by updating NMW legislation.
- Provide maximum clarity on status and rights for all individuals by extending the right to written particulars to all in employment and developing an online tool providing a clear steer on what rights an individual has.
Flexibility
- Task the Low Pay Commission with examining how a higher NMW rate might apply to non- guaranteed hours.
- Develop legislation to make it easier for all working people to receive basic details about their employment relationship up front as well as updating the rules on continuous employment to make it easier to accrue service.
- Reform holiday pay entitlements to make it easier for people in very flexible arrangements to receive their entitlements in real time as well as extending the pay reference period to 52 weeks for those who do not.
- Develop legislation that allows agency workers and those on zero hours contracts the ability to request to formalise the reality of the working relationship.
Transparency
- Draw on expert bodies to drive a much greater push on what constitutes good workplace relations, especially in sectors with high instances of low pay or atypical work.
- Review the effectiveness of the Information & Consultation Regulations, including their scope and thresholds, in driving good employee engagement in the workplace.
- In thinking about corporate governance more generally, develop proposals to require companies to be much more transparent about their workforce structure.
Fairer enforcement
- Enhance state enforcement of basic rights, considering the remit of HMRC and EAS in protecting the most vulnerable workers. As a start, this should include an end to the use of ‘Pay Between Assignment’ contracts.
- Make the determination of employment status fairer to the individual by making it easier for them to get an early determination from the court without having to pay employment tribunal fees for doing so (subject to certain safeguards), and flipping the presumption subject to certain protections so that it is for the employer to show that a particular employment relationship does not exist.
- Ensure more robust penalties are in place to deal with those employers who choose to ignore the courts, either by failing to pay financial awards or failing to apply judgments to other relevant relationships in their workforce.
Incentives in the system
- Seek to examine ways in which the tax system might address the disparity between the level of tax applied to employed and self-employed labour.
The full 116 page report can be accessed through this link - Good Work - The Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices.