Baroness O’Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 322 in my name and those of my noble friends Lord Barber and Lord Monks, who regrets he cannot be in his place. It addresses the same principle as the amendments of my noble friend Lord Hendy: extending collective bargaining is a common good. I strongly welcome Labour’s commitment enshrined in the Bill to introduce a fair pay agreement in social care. As we have heard, social care staff put their health on the line during the pandemic to care for our loved ones, and it is only right that they should be front of the queue for a fair pay agreement. But that cannot be the sum total of our ambition. This amendment seeks to ensure that the Government make a timely assessment of other sectors that could benefit too. There are around 4 million low-paid and insecure workers in Britain today. During the pandemic, many of these workers were classified as key workers—the people who kept Britain running in the toughest of times. They remain essential to our collective security, but their terms and conditions do not always reflect this. Very often, dominant companies in the sectors where they are employed could and should pay more but instead look to squeeze and undercut smaller companies that want to do the right thing. There is little incentive to invest in new tech or equipment, which is essential to boosting productivity when labour is so cheap. As we know, young people are on the sharp end with over one-third of UK graduates employed in jobs well below their qualification level, representing an enormous waste of talent. Organisations from the Resolution Foundation to the Low Pay Commission have already documented which jobs and industries are both holding down workers’ aspirations and holding back productivity gains. The Government can use their convening power to bring employers and unions together to bargain for a better deal, not just on pay but with progression, training and skills too. Collective bargaining is based on the simple premise that workers can achieve more together than we can ever achieve alone. In the UK, we have a national minimum wage. There is also an independent and voluntary real living wage, calculated on the real cost of living. In my book, though, the definition of a fair wage is different: a wage is only fair when workers have a collective say over it and agree it.