Debate contribution: Workers' Rights

Debate contribution by Ms Sorcha Eastwood on 12 March 2024.

MLA

Ms Sorcha Eastwood

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

12 March 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Workers' Rights

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4266724

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I support the motion and the amendment and thank the Members who tabled them. I declare that I previously worked in HR and employment law and was a member of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (USDAW). Obviously, employment law is devolved in Northern Ireland, but, to be brutally honest, over the past seven-odd years, Northern Ireland has fallen well behind on workers' rights and the protections provided to workers in comparison with both GB and south of the border. It is important that the Minister introduces legislation urgently, as we cannot wait for workers in Northern Ireland to have the same rights as those in the rest of the UK or in the South. I also pay tribute to my colleague Dr Stephen Farry, the former Minister for Employment and Learning, who ensured that Northern Ireland was protected from the worst elements of some of the draconian laws brought in under the Tory Administration. Indeed, I have most recently asked the Minister for the Economy whether he has any intention of introducing, for example, the minimum service level laws. He said that he does not, which I welcome. Mr Declan Kearney, who moved the motion, talked about the precariat; indeed, that speaks to the main body of the motion. We have seen massive changes in our economy over the past 10 years, and that has spoken to the people who are in those forms of unsafe, often casual working that are both exploitative and damaging to our economy. We support laws that seek to protect workers. We support people who are working in the likes of Carers NI, TinyLife, Legal Island, the Equality Commission NI, the Human Rights Commission and others, who are seeking to make sure that workers have the same protections in law as they do elsewhere. I look to the Equality Act 2010 that was made in GB, and I look at some of the different pieces of legislation that we derive in seeking to protect workers in the North. There is definitely a lot more that can be done to tidy up the legislation that we use here to protect workers. For example, I look at the most recent developments in GB and see a new duty on employers to take reasonable steps to prevent the sexual harassment of employees in the course of their employment; new rights to carers' leave and neonatal leave, which others mentioned; an extension of protection for employees in health and safety cases; changes in the calculation of compensation for discrimination awards; collective redundancy consultation changes; a day-1 right to a written statement of terms and conditions for all workers; the introduction of new flexible working rights; the extension of redundancy protections to pregnant women; and a new statutory right to request predictable working patterns from employers. The lack of those workers' rights has serious real-world consequences for workers and their families in Northern Ireland. For example, the lack of workplace rights for carers drives many from the workplace and leads to burnout and financial struggles. We support Carers NI and its lobbying for a change in the law, and we note that one in three people with caring roles are leaving work, so we need to act urgently. Public interest disclosure legislation is an area that needs to be updated. Rights and responsibilities in relation to public interest disclosures are contained in the Public Interest Disclosure (Northern Ireland) Order 1998. I encourage the Economy Minister to consider lessons that could be learnt from the Government consultation on the GB whistle-blowing framework and the additional requirements through the EU whistle-blowing directive. Something that is not referenced in the motion is gender pay gap reporting, which Mr Brett, as Chair of the Economy Committee, referenced. We need to recognise that there are powers already there to at least partly address it. If the First Minister and deputy First Minister were willing to use them, they could bring section 19 of the Employment Act 2016 into force. The Act provides for the making of gender pay gap reporting regulations, which should have been in place by 2017. However, given the delay in implementing these, the gender pay gap reporting regulations should go further and, as in the South, apply to employers with 50 or more employees, not just to those with over 250 employees. I mention that because, as others have referenced, Northern Ireland is predominantly an SME economy. Therefore, we want to make sure that, when we are going out of our way to strengthen workers' rights, we monitor and do that in a way that reflects our economy.

I will indeed.

I thank the Member for his intervention. Obviously, the issue of zero-hours contracts impacts on us all. Indeed, we note that the use of zero-hours contracts is predominant in areas with a lack of gender equality, such as health and social care, hospitality and other areas of employment. We want to make sure that the use and exploitation of zero-hours contracts come to an end. We do not hesitate to tell the Member that we intend to make sure that those exploitative forms of working come to an end. We are delighted to make sure that we have the best forms of employment for workers in the North. We want to make sure that Alliance plays its full part —

— in protecting workers. We look forward to working with the Economy Minister to do that in the months ahead.

913 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not qualifying

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 09:46 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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