The House of Common Work and Pensions Committee reports on the pressure placed on the government by MPs, to act now to avoid exclusions from the future world of work. We need a long-term plan to support people to adapt to changes in the labour market and new workplace technology risks.
Technological changes in the workplace risk having an uneven impact on different groups of workers and the Government must be more proactive in planning ahead to avoid people being excluded from jobs and worker protections, MPs say.
In this report, the Work and Pensions Committee calls on the Government to develop a comprehensive long-term strategy on how it will prepare for changes in the world of work brought about by the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
While the Committee concludes that it is not likely that new technology will lead to mass unemployment, it warns that the creation of new jobs and loss of others will be uneven across sectors and across different groups of workers.
The Government must ensure that any changes do not exacerbate existing inequalities, with younger people, disabled people, women, and people from some ethnic minorities particularly at risk of missing out on jobs.
Greater focus should be placed on retraining and reskilling and the Government’s two major employment support schemes, Kickstart and Restart – introduced to get people back to work after the pandemic – must do more to meet the needs of disabled people.
The report also again calls for the Government to bring forward its Employment Bill to protect the rising number of people in precarious forms of work, such as people on zero-hours contracts or working in the gig economy.
The Committee also heard how the coronavirus pandemic has likely accelerated the take up of new technology in the workplace, changed working practices and had an uneven impact on job losses in different sectors of the economy.