General Election 2019: Green Party Manifesto – analysis of their employment promises

One of the main pledges in the Green Party’s manifesto is to have, “gainful employment”. Like the Labour manifesto pledges, their employment-law focus is on polices which they say will address issues of poverty and providing greater financial security to workers. Here are some of their employment pledges:-

1. Increase the Living Wage from £8.31 to £12.00, extending it to workers aged between 16 and 21 (currently the minimum age is 25).

2. Promote more stay at home working to reduce travel and the carbon footprint. This would require employers to reimburse the costs of heating during working hours, electricity and Wi-Fi for, “low income workers” working from home.

3. Support employers to, “explore a 4 day working week without loss of pay, driving up productivity as well as boosting wellbeing of staff”.

4. Support employers to, “explore the benefits of offering menstruation and menopausal leave to workers.”.

5. Legislation to ensure that the maximum wage paid to any member of staff in an organisation should not exceed 10 times that paid (pro rata) to the lowest paid worker in the same organisation.

6. Ban bonuses which exceed the annual wage of the lowest paid worker in that organisation.

7. Close the gender pay gap in all large and medium size companies by carrying out equal pay audits and redress any inequality and change the law so it is easier for employees to take action against employers in unequal pay cases.

8. Impose a quote to require a major company board to consist of at least 40% women.

9. Reviewing current employment law to provide ‘gig economy’ workers with the current minimum wage, job security, sick leave, holiday pay and pension provision.

Whilst the Green party is more closely-associated with environmental policies, the employment law pledges proposed are aimed at providing greater rights and benefits to employees.

To read the Green party’s full Manifesto you can click on the link below:- https://www.greenparty.org.uk/assets/files/Elections/Green%20Party%20Manifesto%202019.pdf

If you want to discuss the past or proposed changes to employment law, or any other employment issue, please feel free to email ben.stanton@franklins-sols.co.uk, or call our Employment Team on 01908 660966 or 01604 828282.