The Employment Rights Act will help to tackle many of the key issues affecting young workers, including:
- Delivering statutory sick pay from day one of absence.
- Removing the lower earnings limit for Statutory Sick Pay.
- Providing a right to a guaranteed-hours contract.
- Requiring employers to give reasonable notice of shifts and payment for cancelled or curtailed shifts’.
- Bringing in provisions to protect workers from customer harassment.
Joanne Thomas – Usdaw general secretary says: “Young workers can be disproportionately impacted by issues at work, like unsocial shifts, problems with serving age-restricted goods and being seen as an easy target for customer abuse. It is deeply concerning that only one in five Welsh young workers are trade union members; however, we now have a clear opportunity to fix this.
“Thanks to Usdaw’s campaigning and a Labour Government delivering, we can see clear changes which will have a positive impact on the lives of young workers. These include better sick pay provisions, working towards the removal of age-discriminatory pay for over 18s, tackling sexual harassment in the workplace and protecting retail workers from threats, abuse and violence.
“With the changes in employment rights coming through, there has never been a better time to talk to young workers about the benefits of joining the union. To deliver a better deal at work, we need to redouble our efforts to organise young workers, who are essential to the future of our economy as well as the labour and trade union movement.”
Usdaw is calling on TUC Cymru to:
- Develop a clear strategy to assist trade unions in taking full advantage of the provisions in the Employment Rights Act to be able to organise young workers.
- Put into practice innovative methods of reaching out to young workers, such as through ‘youth patrols’ as originally founded by Norwegian trade unions.
- Encourage all affiliated unions to play an active role in identifying target areas and industries for ‘youth patrols’.
- Promote the work of these ‘youth patrols’ through social media platforms engaging new audiences.
- Support the development of young organisers through the Young Members Forum and building their role in delivering and developing the future of the youth patrols.
Notes for editors:
Usdaw (Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers) is one of the fastest growing unions in the TUC and the UK's fifth biggest with around 370,000 members. Most Usdaw members work in the retail sector, but the union also represents many workers in transport, distribution, food manufacturing, chemical industry and other trades www.usdaw.org.uk
Norway union's summer youth patrols have been running for over 40 years and are a significant initiative aimed at empowering young workers and raising awareness about their rights and benefits. Patrols focus on workers under 35, providing them with information on union benefits and the importance of joining a union by going directly into workplaces to speak to employees.
For Usdaw press releases visit: www.usdaw.org.uk/news and you can follow us on Bluesky @usdawunion.bsky.social and Twitter/X @UsdawUnion