Plans to erect a statue of Margaret Thatcher opposite parliament have been turned down, it is reported, partly for fear of it being attacked. But surely that was the point? The statue should be built at once. It will become the focus for political mobilisation, the icon of political iconoclasm recast herself as victim of the iconoclasts. Or, more brutally, the vandal of the postwar settlement vandalised by those now suffering its loss.
Part of that Thatcher legacy is the impoverishment of workers. It is the collapse of employment protection and the erosion of the power of trade unions that’s enabled the huge expansion of so-called self-employment, zero-hours contracts and precarious work that are partly to blame for the stagnation in UK pay. It has also made Britain more fertile territory for the digital platforms like Uber and Deliveroo than countries with stronger traditions of worker protection, like France or Germany or Denmark.
Not being Margaret Thatcher was a key part of Theresa May’s unexpected pitch for the Tory leadership in the now distant, prelapsarian times that began on 11 July 2016 and ended abruptly on 8 June 2017. Indeed, she said explicitly that the country had taken several wrong turns in the Thatcher years, not least in promoting finance over industry. She put tackling the gig economy at the top of her first agenda. Next week Matthew Taylor, the model of the centrist, thoughtful politician that May wanted to recruit to her cause, is expected to publish the report May asked him to make into insecure work. In advance, there has been a flurry of evidence published about new ways of protecting workers.
This morning, the Labour MP Frank Field and his chief of staff Andrew Forsey have published their latest findings after looking at the experience of delivery drivers for couriers like DPD and Parcelforce. Some, when they sign up, have to undertake not to challenge their self-employed status. Field and Forsey spoke to people from several companies who – among other complaints – reported that they had to work while sick or newly bereaved or face losing their job or paying huge fines, while sometimes taking home as little as £2.22 an hour. In London, that is less than the cost of a cup of takeaway coffee.
Meanwhile the food delivery platform Deliveroo, which has been at the forefront of legal challenges by its riders, is suggesting that it should be allowed to pay some benefits like maternity pay to its riders without undermining their self-employed status. For a company that is master of slippery language (suppliers, not employees, equipment packs not uniforms and so on) this proposal should probably not be taken at face value.
Earlier this week the Resolution Foundation, whose special subject is low pay and insecure work, found that while one in five employees earned under £320 (less than two-thirds of a typical wage), half of the self-employed do. They recommended extending the minimum wage to some groups of self-employed workers like delivery and mini-cab drivers.
These are altered times, and the prospect of finding room for the kind of legislative reform likely to be needed to meet Matthew Taylor’s recommendations at the same time as handling the blizzard of parliamentary activity precipitated by Brexit feels remote. But only government can sort out the tax laws that define the nature of work. The degree of government enthusiasm for the workers’ cause will be a good indicator of its instincts on the shape of the economy after 2019.
As Philip Hammond, the chancellor forced to U-turn on higher national insurance contributions from the self-employed in April, is aware, it is not only workers who lose out. So does the state in a lower tax take. The TUC reckons it costs as much as £4bn a year. The only winners are the bosses. And us, the consumers, who drive the market for low-cost services and just-in-time deliveries. Well, Margaret Thatcher would like it.
