Brexiteers will say we enact the rules properly whereas other countries do the minimum, but again this is simplistic.
The British attitude varies greatly on what the rules are and who they are designed to effect. So it is that financial regulation from the EU is almost invariably gold-plated and made more onerous for British firms than need otherwise be, in the belief the British should have higher standards than anywhere else.
Regulation of the labour market is in contrast watered down by the UK Government wherever possible, seemingly in the belief the Brits should have lower standards than everyone else in that market. It is a paradox that owes more to British politics than European economics.
The labour point is made forcefully by Simon Deakin, director of the Centre for Business Research at the Judge Business School in Cambridge, in a blog published yesterday on the Social Europe website — which, incidentally, also voices seldom-expressed concerns about negative impacts of the free movement of capital.
He says that the degradation of stable work and wages and the casualisation of employment in large parts of the UK labour market — think Sports Direct’s warehouse in Shirebrook and the labour employed in farming and food-packing — is associated with inward migration from other EU states. But, he adds, that is not the only cause.
The movement of labour into the UK is not something that just happens — it is organised. Basically, UK-based employers use overseas agencies to recruit people to work in the UK. Unfortunately, this is where many of the abuses arise. At its best, the conduct of all parties is perfectly reputable; at its worst, it can appear uncomfortably close to human trafficking.
The UK Government cannot escape blame because its consistent response to the downward pressure on wages and terms and conditions of employment in this country has been to strip away, rather than increase, protections. It has done this in the interests of what it calls a flexible labour market — but which others think is more accurately described as a casualised, low-wage and low-skills economy.
Thus critical protections for agricultural workers were removed with the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board in 2013. Prior to this, the Government successfully watered down the Temporary Agency Work Directive and took advantage of its various derogations and loopholes when transposing it into UK law in 2012.
This is why so many people now work for agencies where they have far more limited benefits and protections than they would if they were directly employed. The Government first tried to dilute and then block the working time directive, which sought to cap the number of hours a person could be forced to work in any given week. It then took advantage of the provision that allowed workers to waive their right to have a maximum working week of 48 hours.
Given this climate and direction of travel, it is not surprising that zero hours contracts took root. Understandably, a lot of people see what is happening in the labour market, and think that leaving the EU is the solution. The point Deakin makes is that Brexit would not help because it would not change the direction of British social policy.
Brexiteers agree that the more open the continuing relationship that is negotiated with Europe in the event of a vote to leave, the more existing single-market rules will stay in place. Depending on the kind of relationship with the EU that emerges, it is therefore possible many of the same single-market rules which cause the problems will still apply — but without the social protections guaranteed by European law.
Alternatively, if the UK left the single market altogether, as leading Brexiteers increasingly advocate, it would have complete freedom to remove all EU labour laws, which would strip UK workers of even their current low level of protection.
Either way, under both the soft and the hard exit, it is difficult to see how leaving the EU can do anything other than make British employment even more insecure and British workers even more worse off.
