63. Will Labour’s Plan To ‘Make Work Pay’ Actually Work?

(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to The Rest Is Money with me, Steph McGovan. - I'm with me, Robert Preston. How you enjoying the election, Steph? - I know, God, you're not bored of it, I'm ready, Robert. - I can be bored, this is the equivalent for people who do my job of the World Cup finals. Welcome to the Atlantic side. - But there is loads to talk about, and we wanna focus this episode in particular on Labour's plans around workers' rights, because they've put out, haven't they, this 24-page document, which basically outlines their plan for what they call make work peer, which is very heavily in favour of workers' rights. There's loads of really interesting stuff in there, and we wanna kind of break it down. Before we do that, before we go into all the different things, 'cause we're talking about, you know, living wage, do your hours, contracts, particular rights, you have that work, before we do that, what did you think of this when you saw it, this document when it came out, Robert? - So look, it has been watered down a bit from the agreement that the trade unions thought that they'd done with Labour on certain elements of this, but it is still, I think, a pretty radical set of proposals, and those people who say Labour has no policies and is coming up with nothing that will make an impact on the way we live and work. Well, on the basis of this document, those people are just wrong. - And so that's gonna be me, you're saying this wrong, because you read it and thought, there's loads of great policy here, yeah, I read it and so. - I say great policy, I say lots of important policy. - Okay, important policy. - And we can go through it and work out which bits are great, and which bits may be not so great. But, you know, this is a genuinely serious attempt to change the relationship between workers, employees, and managers, and owners. And I just wanna put out there the really important economic distributive backdrop, the big trend since the 1980s has been the share of what the economy produces that goes to employees versus the share that goes to capital, those people who provide investment, those people who own businesses, that distribution of income has massively tilted in favor of owners of investors. And the share of what we produce that goes to workers has shrunk very significantly in Britain, in America through much of the rich world. And the big reason for that, one of the big reasons, and I've written and talked to a lot about this over the last few years, one of the big reasons for that has been the weakening of trade unions and the weakening of employment rights. And this is the first serious attempt by a government to tilt power back in favor of workers. And that is the big really important, both political and economic backdrop to all of this. And that I would say we just have to keep in mind, and we have to have a view about whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. And for what it's worth, my view is that many of the thatcher reforms in terms of cutting taxes at the top end, there were some taxes that she inherited which were taking 80, 90% of people's earnings. That was definitely acting as a deterrent to entrepreneurs, bad for the UK. There were certain aspects of trade union rights which were definitely stifling the ability of businesses to grow. There were certain elements of public ownership which were stifling the ability of businesses to grow. But I would argue that over time, the power of employees has been reduced too much and it has been bad for individuals and it is bad for society. - So this is an attempt to rebalance that. I think my beef with it is gonna be, there's a lot of talk about what they'd like to do, but I genuinely can't see how they're gonna make this happen. But shall we look at some of the particular policy points in this? I mean, the biggest I would say is around what people appeared and in this, they talk about the living wage and saying that there needs to be a genuine living wage that reflects the cost of living. And on top of that, there should be this removal of the edge bands. So this, what's in a sense, this kind of discriminatory based on edge, different bands of minimum wage that you get. - Which is certainly any way to be part of that, right? But anyway, yep. The way that the living wage or the minimum wage is set in this country is there's a body called the low pay commission, which gives advice to the government about what businesses can afford to pay in terms of the minimum wage. And Labour is saying there should be explicit note taken by the low pay commission of the cost of living and not just other issues to do with the affordability for businesses. - Well, just on that, so this year we saw, didn't we, the minimum wage go up in April, which was based on the low pay commissions report and it went up by more than a pound an hour to 11 pounds, 44 an hour. That's for that basic 21 years over. That was nearly a 10% increase. It's the biggest cash increase. There have been uplifts based on the low pay commission. And you know, I'm very much of the view of, of course, people should be paid so that they can afford to live. But the way it impacts businesses, these sudden increases like that can be really detrimental to them. So for example, one of my friends who owns a restaurant has been crippled by that rise in April because you know, on top of everything else with food prices and they're like, he's actually closed one of his restaurants that he's had for a long, long time because the staff pay is just too much. And so there's a big issue, isn't there in terms of the care sector in hospitality, in manufacturing, these labor-intensive businesses because it doesn't just push up pay for the minimum work, does it the person on the minimum pay, it then has to push everyone up because anyone who's any, in any senior role compared to the person who's on minimum wage will all want that gap between their pay and the person on minimum wage to be increased too. So everyone's pay goes up, it's not just the minimum wage person. - Well, I don't think everybody's pay does go up because one of the things that businesses say to me is that actually they've had to flatten the pay structure within their businesses that as a result of having to put up the minimum wage as you say, quite significantly, they haven't had the money to increase the pay of those higher up within their organizations by the same amount and therefore pay differentials have reduced. And you pay money, it takes your choice, whether you think that's a good thing or a bad thing. It seems to be in a cost of living crisis as a society we should essentially direct resources to those with least. Now employers say the problem with this is it makes it very, very difficult for them to recruit more experienced talent if within their own organizations they're struggling to pay the going rate for a more experienced manager. So you can't go on forever compressing these differentials. You can't, in the end, have a business that pays absolutely everybody the same rate. So there are, as you say, problems for individual businesses when the minimum wage goes up for a significant amount. That said, and you know, you have got as upset and angry about this as anybody. The last few years have seen way too many people, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people in work having to go to food banks, right? We have seen genuine poverty for people who have employment. And when you've lived through that and you see that as a national scandal, surely the priority for any decent society is to make sure those people at the bottom enough to pay their decent bills. One of the statistics that is really shocking, and round has been making a bit of a fuss about this. The government talks about child poverty falling. And as a sort of proportion of the population, it has fallen a bit. But actually in terms of absolute numbers, there is as much child poverty in this country as there has ever been. Yeah, and that's a scandal. Yes, and on that, you know, the food banks that I work within the Northeast of England, they are all seeing the people using them as the working poor. So they are people who are in work, who are still not able to afford to live. So absolutely, people need to be paid more, of course, so that they can live, so that they can have their life they should have. My worry is just how this is implemented in business and you might be cutting jobs by increasing it too quickly or is minimum wage suddenly going to jump up? That's what I'm wondering with all of this because that's the suggestion that the genuine living wage needs to reflect the cost of living. Does that mean it's suddenly going to have to go up? And I'm just thinking on practical terms, how is that going to happen? And what will it mean for businesses and communities that are already really struggling? Look, your example of a restaurant group closing a restaurant as a direct result of a rise in the living. It's not a group, that makes it sound like it's a big businesses. No, no, but I mean, whether it's a big business or small business, you know, obviously none of us would want a business to close because labor costs go up too much. But if you look at the economy as a whole, unemployment is still relatively low. Actually, vacancy numbers are still higher than they were before the COVID crisis, even though vacancy numbers are coming down. There are jobs out there and one of the problems we've got as we know are really large numbers of people have actually taken themselves out of the workforce. I mean, some of those people potentially might think about working again and filling those vacancies if what they were paid was increased a bit. Plainly, you don't want any government coming in and massively increasing the minimum wage in a way that would lead to a significant rise in unemployment. That would be a disaster. But we have no reason to believe that is what is going to happen. And as a matter of principle, it seems to me asking the low pay commission to take on board how many people in the country are struggling to pay their bills is no bad thing. Yeah, why don't they do that anywhere? Because it's just not in their mandate. It's weird. Should we talk about the next thing, which is zero hours contracts? Because so they want to get completely rid of them, don't they? Well, this is one of the areas where they've modified. OK, so certainly a few months ago, the Labor position was no zero hours contracts. They've now moved to a position where they want to introduce rules that would allow individuals who prefer to work on that basis to be able to work on that basis. Now, I don't know whether it will be possible to draft a law that effectively transfers the power when it comes to zero hours contracts to the employee and away from the employer. The reason, again, agree with this, but I just know you'll be, I broadly take the view that zero hours contracts, as they were being used really quite widely a few years ago, they are still there and they're still being abused to an extent, but they were really being abused a few years ago. Those zero hours contracts where an individual wouldn't know almost from one hour to the next, whether they were going to be wrong up and told to come in or not, that was appalling. I mean, we all need a bit more certainty in terms of planning our working life and knowing what income is coming in and simply being wrong up at home, you know, at a particular point and told you got to come in now, it's just, it's just not fair. You know, that was my life with you during the credit crunch, by the way. Sorry, but I mean, I was on a salary, so it wasn't pay reflective, but you did use to literally just ring me on a Friday night at like, I don't know, eight o'clock and get me to come in to do the 10 o'clock news. All right, sorry, it's my BBC shame. I hope that whatever reforms Labour, if Labour wins, bring in will stop people like me from being able to ring up. But there was reasonably well-paid producers like you in saying, actually, there's a story about it, staff, but anyway. But on a lot less money than you at the time, anywhere, so. Did you notice at the time, though, dear listener? Coming back to this thought, because there was a whole review on this as well, wasn't there a tale of you, which, you know, as you've just said, it found that work has been able to work when they want is a good thing, but not the idea of not knowing whether you have work from day to day or hour to hour. But I think the key here is, something you said, which is choice. Like, if employees had choice on this, because again, I know lots of people who really like their zero hours contracts. For example, one of my friends, who is a makeup artist, has got a zero hours contract in a retail business, so that it means if he gets TV work or whatever, he can go and do that and not do the retail job. If he had specific hours. - But it's the car with him. You tell the retailer I'm not coming in. - Yes, he can, because. I mean, yeah, he can. So that's the. And the retailer is prepared to put up with that? Yeah, because it works for both of them. So it's choice, isn't it? If I don't think anyone should be forced onto a zero hours contract, but I think if there is a way of giving choice in that. - Power to the employees. - Yes, power to the. Yes, but also not taking. If it doesn't work for an employer to have someone on zero, I was contracts fine, but it feels like if it could potentially, there should be a choice that the employee can make to say that they do want to be on them. That would be fair, wouldn't it? Because we are more and more now a gig economy where people. People will have numerous zero hours contracts and then just pick and choose, based on which one they want to do, or, you know, that works with them and what they're doing in their lives, and that should be the way it is, because that does give employee genuine power then, rather than just being an employer who's using it just to send them home whenever they want to bring them in, whenever they like. I mean, this all comes down to, you know, what kind of economic power an individual has. I mean, there are some people who have such valuable skills, the most obvious example at the moment, is if you happen to be somebody who has the skills an AI company, an artificial intelligence company wants, you can pretty much name your price in terms of working for them, and you can name your working hours because you're just unbelievably valuable in that sense. But if you're somebody who very sadly has left school with no qualifications, you are vulnerable to being exploited. And so the issue here is, how do you create a legal framework around something like zero hours that protects the vulnerable? And that is the tricky thing here. You know, my own view is it must be worth trying to protect the vulnerable. Yeah, of course. You know, I mean, just because just think about it, you know, in our own lives. I mean, I suspect we're genuinely fed up sometimes with me ringing you up all those years ago, saying come into work. Yeah. But think about it, if actually whether you could feed your kids, depending on whether you could get that call or not, the stress associated with that is just not. Yeah, of course it is, of course it is. And you're right, but then that's why I think if an employer, it would work for an employer to use zero hours contracts, and it would work for an employee, then they should be allowed for that to happen. It shouldn't be just nowhere, they don't exist anymore. That leads me neatly onto the, the issue of presentism as well. In terms of they're talking out there about the right to switch off. Are you really like the policy around this, don't you? No, no, I don't think I do this necessarily. No, no, no, no, we've talked about this. Listen, we've talked about the huge generational differences around whether you can have a hard stop. Yeah, with where? And one of the things that a few years ago I was, I suppose a bit surprised by, I've never worked working in journalism pretty much my entire life. I have never enjoyed a hard stop. Partly through choice, because as you know, I'm addicted to trying to get stories and you know, addicted to the kind of work I do, probably unhealthily. But you know, I've always regarded the kind of work that we do as sort of 24/7. And although it's annoying sometimes to feel you have to work beyond a certain point, because I love my job, I've never really resented it. And so therefore it has felt slightly odd to me being in, you know, institutions where some people simply turn their phones off or think that you are crossing a line if you're trying to get out of somebody after, I don't know, five or six o'clock in the evening. And I have been struck that quite a lot younger people, you know, we talk about, you know, the, I mean, the millennials phenomenon around this. But I found the sort of insistence that there has to be a hard stop at a certain time, sort of interesting, occasionally quite challenging. I get it though. But you, but using your example, you've just given me about zero hours contracts. If you're a single mom or a single parent, my dad, and you are, you know, you're finishing work at five or six, you need to get the kids tea ready, you need to put them to bed. And then the boss is still messaging you. That's stressful, isn't it? That's exactly the same as, you know, the issue with zero hours contracts and the stress that would bring if you don't know whether you're going into work or you're not and being paid or not. Similarly, if you're getting contacted at any point, that's stressful. So I think I agree with you in the end that this again has to be about who makes the decision. Well, actually, I think it's slightly more complicated than that. So I do agree with you that whether it's for reasons of mental health, whether it's for reasons of just being able to look after your family, I think in most cases, there should be a time when you can tell your employer to hop off. Is that the language you use? Hop off. This is a family-friendly program. What can I tell you? Is it? God, you should have told me that 115 episodes ago. So look, I think, actually, you know, because you say I disagree. I sort of think I do agree in a land now of lots of home working and lots of people work from home or have a mixture of home working and working in the office. When you move over to that hybrid world, people working from home, actually, there is a real risk that you never stop working and that's not fair. So I think, you know, in other countries, Ireland and Belgium already give rights to people there to refuse to look at their emails, for example, after a certain time. I don't think that's unreasonable. Again, basically, given the previous conversations we've had about this, but I actually think this is a reasonable rule to say after a certain point, you know, your boss cannot expect to be able to get hold of you, except in an emergency. I just think you can't, I just think you can't police that. I just think in the world we're in now, where everything's 24/7, you just, it would be impossible to police it. And, you know, okay, you could push it to the point of employment tribunals and everything else, but just on a day-to-day basis, I don't think you can, you can ever manage it. Well, I think you can police it if another bit of what Labour's proposing comes in, which actually, funnily enough, this was something I recommended it, not in my last book, but the book before, a book called WTF. Kitchen, you haven't mentioned your book for ages, by the way. I haven't mentioned bus for ages. And you just said, and you mentioned too, but I'm going back now to a book I wrote in 2016/17. And in that, I said, there needs to be a much more powerful, you know, regulator or enforcement body for employee rights. And actually, I do think that it is possible to police businesses that force employees to work unreasonable hours if you have a much more powerful, well-resourced, essentially, regulator. And I'm absolutely in favour of that to go back to my original point, because I just think that, you know, too much power has tilted in favour of bosses and owners over the last few years. The other big thing in all of this is the rights you get when you start a new job. So, labour and this are saying now that you will be given rights straight away from day one. We're talking about things like sick pay, parental leave, and issues of unfair dismissal. Often, in a company, it's what, is it about two years before you get those rights? So, this would give you them from day one. Do you think that's going to work? Again, there are lots of interesting arguments around this. One of the things, actually, we talked to Paul Johnson about this from the IFS. One of the things we don't have enough of in this country is mobility. People being able to move jobs for personal advancement. One of the arguments against having to wait two years to get full employment protection is it's a real disincentive for people to move from one company to another before they've served their two years because that employment protection, those rights, holidays, pensions and all the rest of it, are so valuable that people feel, oh god, it would be wrong even to go for a bit more money moving somewhere else because I'll just be back to square one in terms of how vulnerable I am to being sacked. And so there is an argument that says, actually, if you want to encourage more people to move around for personal advancement that weirdly, giving them more rights from day one will actually be good, not only for them, but also for employers who currently do struggle to get decent people. Employment mobility is good, not just for employees, but also for employers. Yeah, I think my issue with it is that, is there a chance it might make employers less likely to go for more diversity in their business? Because, you know, if you know that they haven't got these rights for two years, then you can give risky employees. People who you might not normally give a job to, you might give them a job on the basis of, well, if it doesn't work out, we can get rid of them easily and that type of thing. If you don't have that, might it mean that businesses go, hang on, I'm just going to always go for the safe bet in terms of who I employ and therefore not be as diverse. So, for example, will this actually negatively impact women who are of child-bearing age or whatever? Because the companies might go, oh, hang on a minute, I don't want to give them this job because they might have a kid and I'll have to pay maternity leave within this next two years. I don't know, I just worry that it will actually reduce diversity and business rather than encourage it. So, that is obviously a risk and, you know, if a company is thinking of taking on somebody who perhaps has done pretty badly at school, but feels, you know, it might be possible to help this person make the most of themselves, you know, as you say. You know, they might feel more anxious about taking that risk with that individual. That is a concern. I guess the reason in the end, I think, I'm in favour, frankly, of giving people more rights early on, is there are just too many unscrupulous employers who, at the drop of a hat, will just get rid of those who've only recently come in the door. And I just don't think that is fair. You think, though, there's also, and I'm probably going to get battered for saying this, there's also a lot of people who just take the pistol with work as well. Like all my mates who were managers, spend half, well, actually probably spend about three quarters of their time dealing with the shit people in the business, not the people who are doing well and they're always dealing with the ones who, you know, who are playing the sick system brilliantly. And, you know, don't get me wrong, there's obviously genuinely people who are sick and all of that. I'm not saying that, but there are some people who take the pistol. And doesn't that mean there could be more of that too, as much as the unscrupulous bosses that they exist too, there are also the people who take the pistol. Yeah, there's always a mixture. And, you know, in the end, these will be as much political as business choices. And, as I say, against that backdrop of where the power lies, this doesn't seem to me to be a completely unreasonable reform, although again, like everything else we've talked about, given that the prosperity of everybody depends on having thriving businesses. You know, the one thing that you and I would always agree on is any government introducing these sorts of measures has to do it in a sensitive way, which brings us on, I think, to the, the bit of this, which is going to be most political, which are those reforms, which take away some of the restrictions that the government's since 2016, all Tory-led governments have introduced, reducing or restricting the ability of unions to go on strike, subject to certain thresholds of support, and also introduces new rights for trade unions to recruit within the workplace. One of the things that is striking as a backdrop to these reforms, which in general can be seen as giving more power to trade unions, is actually even with the restrictions that are in place at the moment on what the threshold is for taking industrial action. We saw more industrial action in the health service, in the railways, across the public sector, teachers, and then we've seen, frankly, for decades. And the reason we saw that was not because trade union restrictions are too weak, it's because there was a great sense among thousands, hundreds of thousands of public sector workers that they'd been exploited. And the only way to get their bosses, and in this case, mostly the government to listen, was to take industrial action, and that wasn't, you know, because trade unions are too powerful, most people would say it's because the employers had mucked up. But what do you think about this issue of the power of trade unions? Do you worry that a Labour government would make trade unions too powerful again? Again, I think my issue is not with the power they have, it's more that how this is going to actually happen with businesses agreeing to it because, you know, Labour is saying they're going to do all of this in the next 200 days when they get into power, if they get into power. And that, you know, this will come from negotiations with the unions and with business and civil society is what they write in this document. But in practical terms, we have seen the negotiations between unions and businesses have just been appalling and have gone on forever, haven't they? There hasn't really been, like the reason why we've still got the real strikes and things. It's because no one's ever been able to agree anything, so my worry is it's all very well said unions are going to be stronger and this is going to be great for workers, but in practical terms, our businesses who are going to be consulted on this, going to agree with Labour on what they want to do with the unions. I mean, I don't get the sense that businesses are going to get a veto over any of this. What Labour is perfectly sensibly saying is they don't want to introduce these changes in a way that destroys the economy, which is something we would all agree on. But I would say that the culture of trade unions in my lifetime has changed massively. In the 70s, when I was a teenager, it was perfectly clear that some trade unions were wholly political and had big political ends in terms of why they took some of the industrial action they were taking. When I talk to trade union leaders today, they are way more focused simply on what can I get for my members that is in their personal economic interest and that I don't think is unreasonable. Trade unions are a service to a large extent for their members and that service is all about can I make the quality of your working life better, including what you get paid. And if we saw months of industrial action, industrial action is still going on in the health service, but if we saw all that industrial action throughout the public service, I think it's a bit rich to say that's all the fault of the trade unions. The people working in health and education had seen their real earnings, slashed over the past 15 years, their pay had not kept pace with inflation. It had not kept place with a private sector. And at the same time, because resources going into schools and hospitals had been reduced, they also saw the quality of the service they were providing to deteriorate. In many cases, through no fault of their own, it doesn't seem to me to be unreasonable, therefore that they decided if the government wasn't listening to their concerns that they took industrial action, what other, what other results do these people have. And so it seems to me that if you were any government after the election and you were looking at this issue, what you would be focusing on, maybe this is a good time to take a quick break, is actually how do you make sure, as far as you possibly can, that there is a culture of partnership between employers and employees, so that both sides feel they have a stake in the running of whatever institution it is, it might be the business, it might be a public sector. And therefore decisions about things like pay, in terms of conditions, get taken in a rational way rather than a confrontational way. And that's the key, it's the partnership side of this, not the kind of, you know, adversarial fight between the two, which is what it comes across to the public, isn't it, is that it's the trade union versus business, you never get the sense that they're working together. So maybe that's like a PR thing they need to sort out as well. I think it's more than PR, this is about culture. Yeah, should we have that break then? That would be great. So welcome back to the rest of the money with me, Steph McGovern. And with me, Robert Preston. So look, just on this issue of collective bargaining, another really striking bit of this document is that Labour wants to put in place a pay deal for everybody who works in social care. Many of these people aren't unionized, and it's an attempt to fix a genuine problem we got in social care, is there just not enough people working in it, and also working conditions in social care for many people are terrible. So I mean, one of the things that goes on in social care, if you particularly have to move from home to home, you don't often get paid for when you're traveling, which is incredibly unfair, even though that is eating into your life. And so what they do want is effectively a collective bargain for the whole sector, striking to me that if you go back to the Corbin Labour party and their manifesto, this Labour's manifesto in 2019, they were arguing then for this kind of collective bargaining throughout the economy. So whole industries might be the automotive industry, there being essentially minimum pay for the automotive industry or for aspects of, you know, the aerospace industry employers obviously hated that idea of pay bargaining across industries. Because Kirstama wants to be friendly to big business, has dropped that, but it will still be interesting to see if they manage to set pay throughout social care, if that sorts some of the problems associated with poor provision of social care, because more people come into the industry, whether that will be seen as a model for other industries. I think that is definitely an aspect of Labour's policy that is worth keeping an eye on. And interesting though, because you're totally right, absolutely people are working the care sector need to be paid where more than they are. You just wonder though what they're not going to affect is going to be, because care is such a massive bill, isn't it, whether you're paying for it privately or the government are paying for it, care is incredibly expensive. And it's only going to get more costly as, you know, the population gets older and more people fall into the bracket of needing care. I mean, the only thing I would just say, and it's just worth reminding people of this, when Labour introduced the minimum wage initially, lots of business people, Tory Party said this would be an absolute catastrophe, the economy would fall apart. I mean, what is very striking is that when David Cameron and then Boris Johnson took over, they desperately wanted to own the minimum wage, and in fact they rebranded it as, you know, the so-called living wage. And so these prognostications of economic collapse, when you try and fix the living standards of people, history tells you actually they don't necessarily materialize and actually quite often what happens when you pay people more is you get the virtuous effect of more and better people coming in. And employers also think, okay, if Labour is costing me a bit more, I'll also invest more. So I can do more with fewer people. And at a time of low unemployment, and particularly at a time when, for example, all the argument is around, let's reduce immigration. If you create wage structures that encourage businesses to invest more and get more out of the people they employ, then Britain's addiction to actually getting people from the rest of the world to work here, in sectors like social care, you can wean the economy off that addiction to immigration and that whole toxic debate around immigration. Well, you can sanitize that. Yeah, I'll buy into that idea, I think that was well pitched. So just looking at the other things then as well, things that I've particularly popped out to me, and it'll be obvious why some of the stuff around the rights for women, you know, I mentioned earlier about I worry about the fact that you're given basic rights from dear one of starting a job could be detrimental to women, particularly around the maternity front. I'm very pleased to see in there that there's going to be a thing about maternity discrimination, so you can't be sacked for at least six months after coming back because I have genuinely seen that happen to my friends, a friend who works for a very big investment firm. And yeah, it was doing really well at it went off a maternity leave got sideline sideline sign lied when she came back eventually got the boot and really terrible and really terrible, I know shocking stuff around menopause as well, so a menopause action plan for large employers, I think is really important to because so little is talked about, I mean, it's a lot better than it was, don't get me wrong around menopause and the impact that that can have on people's lives, you know, women. Women will be very much, you know, the peak of their career, probably at that age having to go through all that and not getting the support they need is, I think is a really good news. And there's tons of stuff here, which I gain completely approve of, which is about forcing companies, not only to publish which they are forced to do now what the gender pay gap is. But I think it is important to shine a light on discrimination against people, for example, from a whole variety of different ethnicities, you know, and I think broadly demonstrating if, you know, people are being discriminated against because of the color of their skin. And I think that's appalling and shining a light on when that happens is the right thing to do on this issue, I mean, it is really shocking how few big companies are run by women still. Yes. This is not in Labour's document, but quite a senior Labour MP, I thought was a brilliant idea to me, which is the men should have identical personal rights to take time off when they have a kid. And the reason she said, and I think this is absolutely brilliant, why she thinks that, you know, men, for example, both should say get a year, a year is right, not transferable each, right, is she says that as a stroke would make the employment prospects of older women, it would transform them for the better. If you're an employer, right, basically, I mean, this is slightly politically incorrect the way she put it, but let's just say you are confronted with two candidates, a 55-year-old woman, and a 55-year-old bloke, with identical paternity rights, at that point, the risk that the bloke is going to take a year off to look after a baby is way higher than the risk for a woman. And she believes, at that point, any sensible business will simply appoint the woman as their chief executive. But also, loads of men won't have mid-life crises or affairs, will they, because they'll be worried about that. So do you agree that that's a pretty imaginative policy? Yes, because you know what, it took me up to that point to agree to that, because I was originally thinking, hang on, how is this ever going to work? Because you know, when the kind of parental leave, the shared parental leave stuff was brought in very few men actually took it. Did they, there's some like statistics on this, which suggests the uptake for men was often that they didn't do it, they still just let the woman do it. But in this instance, if it's equal, and they both get it, then yeah, that would be great for the child and other kids in the family, and great for the family. It's going to be very costly for business, but I could see how that would work in a heteronormative society. What'd you do if it's two women, like my instance? No, no, but everyone gets it. Yeah, just anybody who's. What about if it's a single parent? Do they get two years? Well, I'd be in favor of that. Yeah. To get back to where we started, though, I do think the critics of all of this will say the great success of the British economy over the last 20-30 years is the flexibility of its labour market, which has led to really historically low levels of unemployment. And I'm not going to dismiss any of that. The fact is we have had relatively low levels of unemployment that stem directly from our labour market flexibility, and that is a good thing. But it is a bad thing when it is associated with in-work poverty, which we have seen on a scandalous scale, particularly over the last 15, 20 years, people should not be forced to work and also have to go to food banks. It's the point that I keep making. And so rules that tilt power more in favour of employees so that they can make a decent living must be a good thing, so long as it doesn't lead to significantly rising unemployment. And my argument would be that if this can be done in a way, and I genuinely think there's an enormous amount of evidence across the world that proves that it can be done in this way, if you can increase effectively the cost of labour in a way that is coupled with incentives for businesses to invest more, and get into a virtuous cycle of employees earning more, and businesses earning a perfectly decent return, both on the people they're employing and on the capital that they've invested. And over time, one of the pernicious things about our economic model is people have substituted cheap labour for capital, for investment, for kit. And that is why people have not been earning enough to pay the bills. And one of the arguments in favour of these sorts of reforms is that it should and could. And you only have to look at Scandinavia, France, all sorts of economies where living standards are higher. That regulation, more rights for employees, is not necessarily associated with lower living standards. In fact, almost all the evidence shows that it is associated with more equal societies and higher living standards. And, you know, businesses, none of us like being told what to do. Of course, I understand why a boss hates the idea of a government telling him or her how to manage their business. But at the end of the day, we all, I hope, want a fairer, richer society. And these sorts of reforms don't necessarily lead to penuery. They can, if implemented in a sensitive way, lead to both a fairer and a richer society. No? Yes, I know. I just. What is it about our model that you love? No, it's not necessarily about what I love about the model that we have at the moment. I'm just saying, I do think, of course, you know, people should be paid rightly, people should be paid more and all that. I just think everything that I've read in that is very much about the worker and not necessarily from the point of view of how this is going to work for business as well. So, you know, I just taught that they can marry together so that it is prosperous for everyone. If you were to look at the rhetoric, certainly, of, you know, Kirstaama and Rachel Reeves and, you know, admittedly politicians rhetoric isn't always the same thing as the reality of what we see when elected. But their rhetoric is all about how they love business and they understand, you know, that they will not be able to do anything that they want in terms of providing resources to the public sector unless business is thriving. So, you know, you either believe them or you don't. But it is a fact that killing businesses to kill the Golden Goose and I just cannot believe, well, maybe they are that stupid. You know, I just, you know, they don't seem that stupid to me. So, the final thing I want to know though before we wrap things up is, are you going to stop, you know, ringing people at 11 o'clock at night or whatever, encouraging them to do work? You know, what's your role going to be in this stopping presentism and the right to switch off Robert Preston? So, my view about all of this is- - I don't care about if you have a poster. - No, you just want to know what are you going to start doing it? - No, no, I'm going to, honestly, I'm not giving a politician's answer, but I think there is, I think there's an important point here, which is underlying all kind of employment reform, right? Should be the ability of people who choose, as it were, to break the rules as employees, as it were, to be allowed to do so without sanction. So, you know, just on your presentation point, right? If somebody is able to demonstrate that they want to work at 11 o'clock at night, you know, they should be allowed to. - I'm going to keep doing it, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry everybody. - Sorry, sorry everybody. - Thank you, and I think we should end things there, but thank you very much for listening. If you have any questions you want us to answer, do send them in, it's rest is [email protected] for the email, or you can send them through our social pages as well, just search for the rest is money. Don't send them at 11 o'clock at night though. Oh, no, actually, you can, because Robert will leave them, I won't. - That's about right. See you soon. - Bye-bye. - Bye-bye. - Bye-bye. - Bye-bye. - Bye-bye. - Bye-bye. - Next, Iranian Revolution. - And Goldhanger is covering every element of this. On the rest is classified, David and I have looked at the role of intelligence agencies in this conflict with the Internet Blackouts and so much unknown. We've been looking at whether spies are best placed to judge whether the regime is truly at risk of falling. Now, on the rest is history, we have been looking at the origins of the Iranian regime. At the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which saw the fall of the last Shah and his replacement by the rule of the Ayatollah, is now given that the last Shah's son is being touted abroad as the man who might just might save Iran. You can't understand what is happening now without understanding what happened back then at the end of the 1970s. But it's not just our own two podcasts that are covering Iran. If you want to know whether Donald Trump's military build up in the region means it's likely he's going to wade in and force regime change, here Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart cover the latest developments in the rest is politics. And our dear friends at the rest is money, have been looking at the economic collapse, the corruption and the impact of the sanctions that have been eating away its social cohesion in Iran over recent years and have pushed so many people. And on empire, they've been looking at the similarities and differences between 1979 and today. How is it that a country that less than 50 years ago forced the Shah out of power is now seeing crowds chanting long live the Shah? So whatever happens next to the people of Iran and to all those brave souls who turn it on the streets to protest, stay tuned to goal hanger for all the context and the answers and the analysis that you need. Find the rest is history, the rest is classified, empire, the rest is politics and the rest is money wherever you get your podcasts.