British outworkers worse off than 90 years ago

July 3, 1996
Issue 

By Lisa Macdonald

Janet, a mother of four from Yorkshire, works at home packing gift tags which retail for £1.50 per bag. She works up to 15 hours a day sorting, counting and stapling bags of the tags. She receives just £7.50 per thousand bags, equivalent to 15 pence an hour.

Janet's story is not unusual. Britain's 1.2 million outworkers, many working in dangerous conditions, are worse off today than 90 years ago, according to No Sweat!, a report prepared for the National Group on Homeworking and the Trade Union Congress released on June 13.

The launch of the report marks the 90th anniversary of the great Sweated Trades Exhibition — a living exhibition of workers in the sweated trades held in London's West End. No Sweat! documents that, today, the average hourly pay rate for an outworker is just £1.28.

Real pay rates are even lower when offset against outworkers' other costs: 40% buy their own machinery, 21% pay for repairs, and 50% buy their own materials. Six in 10 outworkers work at weekends or nights, and one-third say they cannot refuse extra work for fear of losing their jobs.

The wages council system, set up in 1909 and scrapped by Prime Minister John Major in 1993, set minimum wage rates and other conditions for workers, including outworkers. Today's outworkers now have no legal protection against poverty pay. No Sweat! reveals that employers are increasingly forcing outworkers into pseudo self-employed status to avoid giving them the same rights and protection as other employees.

The official figures available show that far from declining, the number of outworkers in Britain has increased by 50% over the last decade.

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