Leadership and Ministry

Catholic Social Teaching in Practice

The Employment Rights Bill

A bill seeking to provide better working conditions and greater security in employment was introduced to the UK Parliament in October 2024. The proposed legislation responds to some of the core concerns of Catholic Social Teaching / By MARIA EXALL

There are deep and persisting problems in the world of work in the UK today. Millions of people experience poverty pay and job insecurity. For over four decades, workers’ incomes have stagnated or gone down in real terms. Meanwhile, the wealthy have got exponentially richer with a corrosive effect on social cohesion.

From Rerum novarum in 1891 to Fratelli tutti in 2020, the Church has called for the working classes to share in the wealth which they create. It has recognised the wider social, economic and political responsibilities which are part of charity in the Christian tradition. These values of Catholic Social Teaching are desperately needed in the UK today.

The aim of Labour’s Employment Rights Bill introduced to Parliament in October 2024 is to encourage decent work and greater security to individual workers, their families and communities.1 The case for raising the bar on workers’ rights from its current low level is compelling from the perspective of Catholic Social Teaching. Earning a living wage and having a secure job is just and necessary.

working families.2 Low pay, in-work poverty and the lack of opportunities in local economies are a downward spiral that destroys all hope and social solidarity.

The immediate cause of the current cost-of-living crisis is the holding down of workers’ pay following the austerity policies brought in by the Conservative-Lib Dem Coalition in 2010 and continued by all the subsequent Conservative Governments between 2015 and 2024. As a result of this austerity, working people in the UK have experienced the longest and harshest squeeze on wages in 200 years.

The long-term growth of wage inequality and inwork poverty is the result of the accommodation, to varying degrees, of a neo-liberal economic consensus by all Governments over the past four decades. This has also been accompanied by the deliberate disempowering of the trade union movement. All Conservative leaders since Margaret Thatcher have wasted no time once elected in introducing anti-Union legislation to remove resistance to their economic plans and policies.

The proposals in the Employment Rights Bill will lead to the greatest change in the world of work for generations. Being treated fairly at work is an important part of our sense of belonging and is integral to the moral health of our society. The Employment Rights Bill will empower working people for the Common Good.

Why our labour market needs changing

There is a crisis in working-class living standards. Currently work does not guarantee freedom from poverty for workers or their dependents. Two thirds of all child poverty in the UK is within

The proportion of national income that goes to wages rather than profits has declined by over ten points since the 1980s. There has been ‘race to the bottom’ on wages and terms and conditions of employment with the burden falling disproportionally on low-paid workers and those who are marginalised. This cost-of-living crisis is a humanitarian crisis of food and fuel poverty, with foodbanks and warm banks the shameful result.

Many of the workforce who do some of the most important jobs in our society, including education, health and social care, saw the value of their pay reduce by up to 25 per cent because of 14 years of

6 | Pastoral Review Vol. 21 Issue 1 | January/February/March 2025