BLACK workers are more than 50 per cent more likely to be employed on exploitative zero-hour contracts than white workers, new TUC analysis reveals.
The union body published the research showing how black workers are bearing the brunt of insecure work today as delegates gather for TUC black workers’ conference.
The analysis also found that nearly four in 10 BME (black and minority ethnic) workers are also at risk of unfair dismissal, due to having been with their employer for less than two years.
Black workers are also overrepresented in four of the five occupations with the highest number of workers on zero-hours contracts.
This is most stark in social care, where one in 15 is employed, compared to one in 50 white workers.
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Why is the Labour government so addicted to giving government jobs to Tories when it spent so long trying to oust them? In the hope the favour is returned the next time the Tories return to power, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
THERE has been a small rush of Tory-linked appointments by the Labour government, showing Starmer’s ministers are pretty comfortable working with Conservatives. It all looks like a uniform, centrist “political class” are settling back in power, however we voted.
In March, Science Secretary Peter Kyle made former Tory science minister David Willetts chair of the Regulatory Innovation Office. A Labour science minister giving a government job to a former Tory science minister looks like “one hand washing another,” a political system where the “insiders” just give each other jobs.
At election time, the winning party promises “change,” and claims big ideological differences with the losers for the purpose of the election. After the votes, we get more of the same.
The Regulatory Innovation Office is supposed to stop regulators from getting in the way of new business innovations. Willetts is a veteran Thatcherite, who worked for Thatcher in her policy unit in the 1980s, so trying to reduce regulation is right up his street.
Willetts is an “intellectual” Tory nicknamed “two brains,” although both of these brains have backed policies like the Poll Tax, which are now viewed as disastrous.
Willetts was a firm backer of Thatcher’s policies during the miners’ strike, and as a minister upped students’ university tuition fees to £9,000 a year. If Labour members — or voters — were asked if they wanted Willetts, they would surely say “no.” Which is why they weren’t asked.
Keir Starmer commits to play the caretaker role for Capitalism through the “hard times”.Image of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. UK halts aid to UNRWA in Gaza over Israeli allegations that 12 staff from a total of 13,000 were involved in the 7 October 2024 attack on Israel.Keir Starmer says that his Labour Party is intensely relaxed about assaulting the very poorest and most vulnerable.