Consultation launched on improving enforcement of labour market exploitation
The Government has launched a consultation on tackling exploitation in the labour market. The UK currently has a strong statutory framework to ensure those currently working are paid the national minimum wage (NMW) and benefit from other employment rights. Several aspects of this framework are enforced by the State on behalf of workers. However, the Government states that there has been a change in the nature of non-compliance with labour market regulation over the last ten years, with a shift from abuses of employment regulation towards increasingly organised criminal activity engaged in labour market exploitation. Feedback from enforcement officers suggests that serious and organised crime gangs are infiltrating legitimate labour supply chains across a number of sectors, and that the incidence of forced labour may be growing at a faster rate than other forms of exploitation. In addition, as the number of people participating in the workforce continues to increase, it is even more important to ensure that workers receive, for example, the NMW. This requires even more flexibility to target enforcement appropriately.
As a result of these increases in both the level of participation in the labour market and the reported incidences of exploitation, the Government states that it needs to consider the effectiveness of the way it tackles non-compliance with labour market regulation across the spectrum. The consultation therefore examines the ability of the current framework to deal with individuals and businesses that breach this regulation, from serious criminality to low-level non-compliance. As such, the consultation seeks views on a number of proposals to make employment rights enforcement more effective to protect workers from exploitation, including:
• Establishing a statutory Director of Labour Market Enforcement.
• Creating a new offence of an aggravated breach of labour market legislation.
• Increasing intelligence and data-sharing between the existing enforcement bodies.
• Widening the remit, increasing the powers and changing the name of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority in order to allow it to deal with serious exploitation.
The deadline for comments is 9 November 2015.
