Creating a 'Forced Labour Monitoring Group'

The UK has a Low Pay Commission that is responsible for monitoring, and advising on, National Minimum Wage policy. In November 2008 a Fair Employment Enforcement Board was set up to look at issues of workplace exploitation and abuse beyond non-compliance with the National Minimum Wage. However, the Board met for the final time in May 2010 and nothing has replaced it. It is our view that this reflects a failure to monitor, support and protect the UK's most vulnerable - largely temporary and migrant - workers rather than an absence of exploitation and abuse per se. We propose using ESRC follow-on funding to effectively re-gain the impetus that led to the Fair Employment Enforcement Board getting established and, specifically, to set up an independent and multi-stakeholder 'Forced Labour Monitoring Group'. This group would draw together government inspection agencies, policy makers, academics, and representatives from business, the unions and the wider voluntary and community sector. It would also be both virtual (via a website) and face-to-face (via a series of five workshops). We focus on 'forced labour' because it has a basis in UK law. It was made a stand-alone criminal offence under Section 71 of the Coroners and Justice Act (England, Wales and Northern Ireland) in 2009 and Section 47 of the Criminal Justice and Licensing Act (Scotland) in 2010. In other words, the Forced Labour Monitoring Group will be directed towards identifying and seeking to prevent specific forms of workplace abuse and exploitation that are now illegal under UK law. Examples of outlawed forced labour practices include: physical or sexual violence (threat of and/or actual harm); restriction on movement; bonded labour; withholding of wages; retention of passports and identity documents; and threat of denunciation to the authorities (ILO, 2005: 20-21). The Forced Labour Monitoring Group would also directly intervene in current policy debates around, amongst other things: the link between immigration policy and forced labour; the future of the different UK government inspection bodies; the future of Legal Aid; and, the future of the Employment Tribunal system. Furthermore, we see the FLMG as a 12-month pilot for a potentially permanent network that could be independent and/ or embedded within government (along the lines of either the Fair Employment Enforcement Board or an All-Party Parliamentary Group).

The research is expressly designed with the welfare of abused and exploited workers in mind. Specifically, we note the current inactivity (since May 2010) of the 'Fair Employment Enforcement Board' and the proposed changes to workplace regulation (Davey Review), Legal Aid, and the Employment Tribunal systems. This highly dynamic policy context makes the establishment of an independent monitoring group - that places the welfare of vulnerable, often agency and/ or migrant workers, at the fore - even more pressing. Moreover, it is surprising given the recent work of the TUC (via its 2008 Commission on Vulnerable Employment), BIS and CAB (via the 2008 Vulnerable Worker Enforcement Forum), the Equality and Human Rights Commission (via the 2010 Inquiry in the Meat and Poultry Processing Sectors) and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (via the 2010 Forced Labour research programme) that such a group does not already exist.

As well as being focused on the welfare of workers, the Forced Labour Monitoring Group (FLMG) would support the work of the third sector - most notably the CAB, Unions, Anti-Slavery International, and the Migrants Rights Network - as they seek to tackle and reduce workplace exploitation and abuse in the UK. Alongside this, corporate social responsibility (CSR) is now a priority of the major transnational corporations in the UK and the FLMG would dovetail with this CSR agenda.

Overall, we expect that the 12-month project to create a platform upon which a more permanent multi-stakeholder umbrella network could be established. In other words, we see the FLMG as a pilot project that could be taken forward in one of two ways: either as a wholly independent monitoring group operating by stakeholder consensus; or, as a policy network embedded within the Parliamentary system. In terms of the latter, an All-Party Parliamentary Group on Forced Labour could be a longer-term outcome of the FLMG, or, the Departmentally-embedded 'Fair Employment Enforcement Board' model could be revived.

Finally, debate and discussion around forced labour is still in its infancy. The academically-orientated journal papers on forced labour, based around the five workshop themes, allied with the policy-orientated 'Forced Labour in the UK' book (as part of the Policy Press 'Social Harm' series) would address this issue. The impact of the pilot FLMG would therefore be assured irrespective of whether or not stakeholders decided to take it forward beyond the 12-month funding period.