country has faced for a very long time, and our responsibility to taxpayers to control public spending to support our economy.
The recommendations of the Prison Service Pay Review Body have been accepted in full to give staff in prisons a pay increase of 1.7% on average – recognising the need to help recruit and retain staff with the right experience and expertise to keep our prisons safe and secure.
These pay awards will be funded within existing budgets.
For 2018/19 onwards, the government recognises that in some parts of the public sector, particularly in areas of skill shortage, more flexibility may be required to deliver world class public services, including in return for improvements to public sector productivity. The last Spending Review budgeted for 1% increases in basic pay, in addition to the progression pay awards within specific workforces. There will still be a need for pay discipline over the coming years, to ensure the affordability of public services and the sustainability of public sector employment.
The detail of 2018/19 pay remits for specific Pay Review Bodies will be discussed and agreed as part of the Budget process and be set out in due course.
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Employee outsourcing hides forced labour in the workforce 18 September 2017
Failure to monitor outsourced recruitment is resulting in companies inadvertently employing victims of forced labour, according to new research from the Universities of Sheffield and Bath.
Interviews with experts in business, NGOs, trade unions, law firms and the police showed that while companies can increasingly trace where their products come from, many are in the dark about the backgrounds of their staff.
The research , conducted by the University of Sheffield and the University of Bath’s School of Management, suggests that layers of outsourcing, subcontracting and informal hiring of temporary staff are to blame. This, say the researchers, enables victims of forced labour to be hidden within the workforce of companies and organisations – even those with the best intentions. Statistics recently released by the National Crime Agency showed that the number of people reported as potential victims of forced labour and human trafficking in the UK has more than doubled in the past three years, with 3,805 people referred for help in 2016. The researchers concluded that the key issue in tackling forced labour is ‘understanding the labour supply chain’ – the often unregulated networks through which contingent and sometimes forced or trafficked workers are recruited, transported, and supplied to business by third party agents. “Leading UK companies are starting to belatedly wake up to the fact that their existing systems for detecting worker abuse simply are not fit for purpose for uncovering forced labour. But, as new initiatives emerge, the critical factor determining their success will be whether they meaningfully address the labour supply chains that feed their business. It is these chains that make forced labour seemingly invisible even when the workers subjected to them are right in front of us in the farms, factories and construction sites that surround our communities.” The study showed that most incidences of forced labour were several steps removed from the core workforce at the producer company. Within the agricultural sector these employees could potentially only be on site for a matter of days or weeks, making it difficult for producers to detect abuse. Study co-author Dr Genevieve LeBaron, from the University of Sheffield’s Department of Politics, said:
Lead author, Professor Andrew Crane, Director of the University of Bath’s Centre for Business, Organisations and Society, said:
“Companies have little hope of detecting modern slavery practices unless they adopt a new approach that focuses specifically on their labour supply chains – they need to be able to trace the origin of their employees in the same way as most now can for their products.
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