UK Poverty Post

The recession on our doorstep – BMW cut 850 jobs across the road.

Usually this blog is global, but today it’s intensely local too.

Because, you see, from my window here in Oxfam House I can see the Cowley car plant. The building I’m in was built on the site of the old plant, before modern technology moved it 500m to the other side of the Oxford ring road and the site became a business park.

This morning, BMW announced that it was laying off 850 temporary agency workers, and reallocating the permanent staff to cover a reduced shift pattern.

But the use of “temporary” in that sentence is misleading: these weren’t “temps” covering illness or maternity, they weren’t “temps” providing extra capacity at busy times. They were, to all intents and purposes, permanent employees of BMW. Many had worked there for years – two, three, five, in some cases. A length of service that for an employee would mean that they had some measure of security in their work, and if they got laid off, they’d be entitled to some level of protection.

But not these workers. In the UK, temporary and agency workers can be laid off with no notice; they have few rights. These workers are going, in the space of days, from steady £250 per week jobs to £60 per week jobseekers’ allowance, with no redundancy lump sum to cushion the blow.

Oxfam works with poor and marginalised workers to get better labour rights all over the world. We do so because a good job is more than income and because good labour policy is a critical part of economic development. While wages are important, so are conditions of work – being sacked with no notice and not having sick pay, maternity pay or holiday pay can also cause poverty and vulnerability.

Oxfam’s been involved in successful labour rights campaigns all over the world – such as increasing the minimum wage in South Africa; winning safer factory standards in Central America; fighting off threats to make permanent workers ‘temporary’ in Indonesia and Honduras; supporting migrants to successfully negotiate a contract for eight thousand workers in the US.

Here in the UK, Oxfam’s Migrant Workers Project works with migrants, often agency workers, who’ve experienced exploitation in the workplace. Recently we ran a series of workshops here in Oxford with migrant workers – including some employed at BMW – to let them know their rights at work and how to get help and advice. And, of course, we campaign for better labour rights for the 2m vulnerable workers in the UK.

In the last few years, the dictates of “labour market flexibility” and “competitiveness” have driven a move away from employing workers directly, where they can access rights fought for over decades, to employing workers through agencies, on temporary contracts. The UK has by far the largest temporary workers sector in the EU. Without legislation stating that agency workers must be treated equally with directly-employed workers, employers will always be tempted to cut corners on pay, terms and conditions.

Unions, MPs and NGOs like Oxfam have mobilised to try to get new rights for temporary workers over the last few years. Twice, backbenchers have brought Private Members Bills to parliament demanding new rights; under pressure from campaigners the government promised in their manifesto to set the problem right, but have thus far failed to do so.

And that means that, today, in common with other former agency workers all over the country, 850 BMW agency workers are stood outside a jobcentre in Oxford, laid off with an hour’s notice and no redundancy.