Good Work: The Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irj.12239
• Date: 01 November 2018
• Published date: 01 November 2018
• Author: Peter Nolan

Good Work: The Taylor Review of Modern

Working Practices

Peter Nolan

INTRODUCTION TO THE SYMPOSIUM

The Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices (henceforth the Review) was

commissioned in 2016 by Theresa May, shortly after she succeeded David Cameron

as Leader of the Conservative party and Prime Minister in the immediate aftermath

of the Brexit referendum. Since its publication in July 2017, it has divided public

opinion.

The business world, in broad terms, joined Theresa May’s government in welcom-

ing the Review’s positive view of Britain’sflexible labour markets and, crucially, its

espousal of a voluntary route to ‘good work’and better working lives. The ‘British

way’, we are told early on in the Review, ‘is rightly seen internationally as largely suc-

cessful’;‘the UK is good at creating jobs and this good performance on quantity of

work should be celebrated …’ (p. 18).

Turning to the quality of jobs, about which there is little if any detailed discussion,

the Review assumes a highly prescriptive tone: ‘The best way to achieve better work is

not national regulation but responsible corporate governance, good management and

strong employment relations within the organisation …’ (p. 9). Listed among ‘seven

steps towards fair and decent work’, this abrupt and audacious repudiation of the ef-

ficacy of regulation is advanced without justification or evidence of any kind. It

should therefore not come as a surprise that at no point in the Review is there any

mention of arguably the most significant feature of the contemporary UK workplace:

the near total absence of what Galbraith referred to as a ‘countervailing power’to un-

bridled managerial authority (Galbraith, 1952).

Scarcely surprising then that the response from labour organisations to the Review

has been largely negative. ‘This is not the game changer needed to end insecurity and

exploitation at work’, came the judgement from Frances O’Grady, General Secretary

of the TUC. Len McCluskey, leader of the UK’s largest union, Unite, observed that it

had spectacularly failed to ‘address the rampaging growth in forced self-employment

…and the unacceptable use of zero hours and agency work to deny someone a per-

manent, full time job’. For the Independent Workers’Union of Great Britain, which

represents many gig economy workers, the Review was fatally flawed by the inclusion

among its core panel members of an early investor in Deliveroo. What are the ele-

ments of the Review that render it attractive to employers and government and unpal-

atable to labour organisations?

The Review gives primary attention to non-standard forms of work: employment

in the gig economy, the diffusion of zero hours contracts and the rights, wages and le-

gal status of the ‘bogus’self-employed. As a flip side to its focus on insecure forms of

work, the Review gives no serious consideration to the changing conditions of em-

ployment in low wage, labour intensive industries such as garment manufacture,

where all too commonly the prevailing business model is non-compliant with the laws

Industrial Relations Journal 49:5-6, 400–402

ISSN 0019-8692

© 2018 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd