Introduction

This report explores possible new or adapted policy levers to improve fair work in Scotland. The research was commissioned by the Scottish Government on behalf of the Fair Work Convention (FWC).

The commitment to fair work in Scotland is long standing and significantly more embedded in policy than elsewhere in the UK, as illustrated by the establishment of an independent FWC in 2015 to advise the Scottish Government on fair work and to advocate for fair work,[2] the development of an evidence-based Fair Work Framework in 2016, the endorsement by the Scottish Government of that Framework and a Fair Work Action Plan to ensure its delivery, recently updated[3]. Advocates of fair work recognise its potential to benefit not just workers/employees, but also employers (across the private, public and third sectors), the economy and society.

Fair work is defined in Scotland’s Fair Work Framework as paid work that offers effective voice, opportunity, security, fulfilment and respect. Fair work is, therefore, multidimensional and spans the range of policies and practices that affect the conduct of work, employment and employment relations in Scotland’s workplaces. This includes access to work and employment; contractual arrangements; pay and remuneration policies; the design of jobs and work; career development; access to training, skills and learning; performance and its review; health, safety and well-being policies; work-life balance; and workplace communication, voice and decision making.

At this stage of fair work’s (and the FWC’s) trajectory and development, ensuring substantive and measurable progress on fair work requires identifying:

1) actions that can further leverage fair work;

2) the ownership of these levers and the conditions in which they can be deployed; and

3) the constraints and facilitators of their deployment, and their likely effects or outcomes.

These levers are also likely to be sensitive to context, such as different sectoral and industry characteristics, and to the distinct challenges emerging from economic turbulence in the Scottish and UK economies that shape the conditions in which fair work thrives or declines.

Advancing fair work and the role of policy

Scotland and the UK are liberal market economies with weaker institutional arrangements for shaping fair work than is the case in countries with greater institutional economic coordination.[4] This creates challenges for where, how and by whom fair work is activated and requires creativity in identifying opportunities for leveraging fair work. It is helpful to frame the opportunity structure for leveraging fair work in terms of key domains, dimensions and actors within the fair work landscape, and the potential for policy intervention.

Interventions to deliver fair work can take place in different domains – either within or outwith workplaces. In either case, interventions can be regulatory or voluntary (including incentivised voluntary actions). To illustrate, aspects of fair work within workplaces might be leveraged by regulations that require certain workplace practices. In Scotland, the absence of employment law powers means that any workplace intervention is likely to depend on the voluntary actions of employers, and workers where they have sufficient power to act, alongside an influencing role for the Scottish Government.

Outside of workplaces, interventions might occur prior to work – for example, practices that might improve equality of access to work for those with protected characteristics through networking, training and support; or educating young people about fair work; or ensuring that employability support specifically targets fair work. Interventions might also run parallel to work, for example, by setting conditionality requirements for the delivery of public contracts, or by building alliances across civil society organisations to de-legitimise practices that are inconsistent with fair work (such as, for example, fire and rehire).

Levers for fair work can be directed toward support for the idea of fair work in general and towards the multiplicity of distinct practices that underpin the fair work dimensions. Levers might operate at and across quite distinct levels: national, sectoral, industry, occupational or demographic. For example:

The fair work ecosystem in Scotland contains a range of important actors within and beyond workplaces. The Fair Work Framework[5] sets out an illustration of the relevant landscape and the multiple collective actors with a direct or indirect stake in what happens within Scotland’s workplaces (adapted below). It is important to acknowledge that beyond the direct workplace stakeholders (employers, managers, workers and unions) there are many educational, policy, accreditation, support, regulatory and civil society actors as well as clients/customers and communities that might have a role to play in the advance of fair work, often with opportunities to act collectively and in partnership. These include but are not limited to business organisations; trade union confederation; the UK and Scottish governments; local government; public agencies; professional bodies and associations; regulatory, accreditation and quality bodies; universities and colleges; campaigning organisations; and judicial, quasi-judicial and dispute resolution bodies.

Government and policymakers are particularly important actors in relation to fair work. They can engage directly and indirectly with other stakeholders and influence their actions through a range of mechanisms, processes and relationships. How government and policymakers leverage their actions and relationships in support of fair work is crucial to delivering the real change and progress required for Scotland to be a leading fair work nation by 2025.

Findlay and colleagues have argued that “Intervening to improve job quality, however, requires more than exhortation, and many governments fail to deploy sufficiently or at all the range of levers at their disposal”.[6] Important levers that could support fair work are not within the devolved powers of the Scottish Parliament, such as those that relate to employment law, aspects of health and safety regulation and important elements of equalities protection. However, there are other ways in which the Scottish Government can act directly or indirectly to deliver a leading fair work nation.

Multiple policy levers have been deployed to support fair work since the Scottish Government’s adoption of the Fair Work Framework. Specific responsibility for fair work has been enshrined in the portfolios of Cabinet Secretaries and in Scottish Government departments. Ministerial letters of guidance to public agencies and bodies have focussed attention on delivery of fair work, and their subsequent organisational strategies have reflected their activities to support fair work. The Fair Work Convention has continued to be supported by the Scottish Government to advise government on fair work and to advocate for fair work more widely. New National Performance Indicators have been adopted to capture, measure and monitor aspects of fair work. Public funding has been made available to employers’ organisations and trade unions to support fair work. More recently, fair work has featured more centrally as a criterion for public funding and procurement. Few of these policy actions have been formally measured or evaluated in relation to their impact but taken together they have undoubtedly enshrined fair work as an important policy focus in Scotland. There may well be an argument for refreshing some of these previous policy foci, but the purpose of this research is to consider potential new levers.

These include the use of devolved regulatory and non-regulatory powers; government spending, public procurement and funding arrangements involving fair work conditionality; the development of policies in relation to business and skills support that target fair work; and a variety of ways to encourage and embed a commitment to fair work amongst workplace stakeholders in Scotland. The adoption and early deployment of Fair Work First conditionality in public sector grants and procurements illustrates one such lever.

The NATO framework[7] is helpful to understand the ways that policy can impact on fair work. NATO stands for Nodality, Authority, Treasure and Organisation. Nodality refers to the role and importance of government and policymakers within networks, where they can aid flows of information across key workplace actors. Policymakers are not just network members but can also, crucially, perform a meta governance role in helping to corral, combine and integrate ideas, concerns and priorities across networks to deliver jointly developed solutions.

Authority refers to the power of government to regulate to ensure changes in or uptake of particular practices. While authority is often the strongest lever of government and policymakers, regulation/legislation can be blunt instruments and are often focused on ensuring only minimum standards of workplace and labour market practice. Authority is more complex in systems of multilevel governance such as in the devolved context of Scotland, where key powers are reserved to the Westminster Parliament.

Treasure refers to the resources that governments and policymakers can deploy to influence or shape practice, either by incentivising good practice or disincentivising poor practice. This can include, for example, attaching conditions to the receipt of public funding or in procurement processes.

Lastly, Organisation refers to the assets (human and material) available to government and policymakers to support the activities of other actors. Governments can, for example, use their own staff to support and co-ordinate programmes and the activities of other workplace actors.

An understanding of the interaction of domains, dimensions, actors and policy roles sets the backdrop against which levers for fair work can be identified and evaluated. Levers might either deter poor practice or support and encourage better practice in relation to fair work – and some levers might do both.