In theory it’s a good idea and has been a long-time coming (the Tories considered doing the same). But it is a concept that is concerning some business leaders who see a future with even more admin in it.
What nobody wants is for this to effectively turn into an Ofsted for UK plc. While Ofsted merely checks that teachers and schools are living up to the standards set by the Government, inspections can be so stressful and time consuming that critics say schools pay more attention to box scores than ensuring good education for children.
The danger is the Fair Work Agency falls into the same trap, and companies end up focusing more on pleasing the watchdog than on their actual business.
Workplaces should be scrutinised and held to account, and so having one workers’ rights ‘super’ watchdog makes sense, but the Government needs to steer clear of an arbitrary inspection process that encourages micromanagement and even more pointless, performative meetings.
It will be a waste of time if this new agency encourages talented leaders to morph into an extension of HR, plotting ways to get brownie points with inspectors instead of concentrating on the job. And, given that a large number of people won’t complain about mistreatment at work for fear of retaliation, this could quickly become a box-ticking game where only the most obvious offenders suffer.
For example, inspectors may well be greeted by smiles and enthusiasm from the HR team, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t mistreatment behind the scenes. In sectors such as social care, agriculture and domestic work, a major problem is migrant workers feeling too afraid to stand up for their rights at work out of fear of losing their visas, as Citizens Advice warned last month.
A Fair Work Agency simply won’t work if it just relies on box-ticking from companies that have paid lawyers to say the right thing, or on calls from the most aggrieved or outspoken workers looking for help. It needs to be more imaginative than that if it’s really going to be effective.
If done well, the Fair Work Agency could tackle a range of problems and make the system less fragmented by combining several units currently responsible for workers rights into one. The Tories toyed with the same idea, first ditching it and then reconsidering it after the Leicester sweatshop scandal. Covid was blamed for why it never took off.
Employment lawyers in Australia suggest that was a mistake, as a similar model there has worked well. Paul Brown, a Sydney-based lawyer for Baker & McKenzie, said that Australia’s Fair Work Ombudsman has proved to be a “very effective” way of policing the exploitation of workers. It has effectively halted behind the scenes pay-offs, he explains, and is now considered a “credible body not seen to be captive to unions”.
If Labour really is going to revolutionise workers’ rights, then it needs a clear way of holding sloppy employers to account. The lazy way of doing that is to go for the most obvious targets while burdening everybody else with red-tape and time-consuming paperwork.