UN Human Rights Council Universal Periodic Review - fourth cycle recommendations: Scottish Government response

8. Business, Fair Work and Employment

A) Fair Work

Recommendation(s) and Responses

Relevant section(s) of the October 2022 UPR Position Statement

• 8(A) – Promoting Fair Work and Responsible Business
• 8(E) – Scottish Business Pledge

Related section(s) in this Position Statement

• Section 8B – Equality in the Workplace

Recent Progress and Next Steps

In March 2022, the Scottish Government (SG) published its National Strategy for Economic Transformation (“NSET”)^[159]. Priorities for action included a Skilled Workforce and a Fairer and More Equal Society. Scottish Government’s aim in terms of a skilled workforce was to ‘ensure that people have the skills they need at every stage of life to have rewarding careers and meet the demands of an ever-changing economy and society and that employers invest in the skilled employees they need to grow their businesses.’

Actions as part of the overall plan to achieve this include a commitment to the development and implementation of a Lifetime Skills Offer which will target investment and support to working age people in poverty. The evidence gathering phase for this work, which ran between July 2022 and July 2023 is now complete and work is underway to draw this together for publication. Evidence includes evaluation of existing skills programmes and a literature review of adult lifetime skills which sought specific evidence on the impact of skills on tackling inequality and poverty.

We have also worked with the Poverty Alliance who are undertaking a programme of evidence-gathering with grassroots community groups and individuals to provide primary evidence on tackling poverty through upskilling. In June 2023, we published the Purpose and Principles for Post-School Education, Research and Skills^[160] which sets out a framework for decision making for post-school education, skills and research to ensure the system is fit for the future, delivering the best outcomes for learners, employers and value for money. Equality is the first principle of the Framework.

On 09 December 2022 we published our refreshed Fair Work Action Plan (“FWAP”)^[161]. This brings together our original Fair Work, Gender Pay Gap, and Disabled People’s Employment action plans, along with the actions from our new Anti-Racist Employment Strategy. It includes actions being taken forward by the Scottish Government and various public bodies to:

• encourage employers to offer appropriate effective voice channels;
• support strong trade unions and promote collective bargaining;
• continue to apply Fair Work conditionality to as much of our public spending as we can, within the limits on devolved competence;
• continue to reduce the gender pay gap, halving the disability employment gap, reduce labour market inequalities for racialised minorities, and reduce intersectional barriers.

All of the areas of work above form part of a broader, long term period of reform of the post-school education system to ensure it is fit for the future and supports those who need it most. The work is in early planning stage so it is not possible to provide further detail at this time.

Scottish Ministers announced on 6 December 2022 that the default position is that grant recipients awarded a public sector grant^[162] on or after 1 July 2023 will be required to pay at least the real Living Wage and provide appropriate channels for effective workers’ voice.

The Living Hours Accreditation Scheme for Scotland^[163], set up in July 2021, has now increased the number of Accredited employers since its launch to 22. Due to its success the Scottish Government is working with the delivery partner, Living Wage Scotland^[164], to promote the scheme further as part of its ambitions to increase the number of workers in Scotland getting paid, at least the Real Living Wage. The Scottish Government recognises that security of pay and contract is essential for those that are able to work and that the number and frequency of work hours are critical to tackling in-work poverty.

The Scottish Government (within the FWAP) is undertaking an equal pay audit, on course to be completed by 2024. We have committed to act on the findings; and to promote existing and new advice, support and guidance on the benefits of flexible working to employers across Scotland which is of real benefit to many disabled people, as well as working women balancing caring responsibilities with work.

Best practice examples developed for Fair Work First aim to support employers in addressing the labour market barriers faced by women including highlighting resources to support women experiencing menopause and calling for private, healthy and safe spaces for breastfeeding mothers to express and store milk in the workplace.

In addition, Close the Gap^[165] are being funded up to £700,000 between 2021-2024 to support employers address gender pay gaps.

A review of the Scottish Business Pledge (SBP)^[166] is underway. New applications have been put on hold. The review will consider the role and purpose of the SBP in 2023, acknowledging that the post Brexit, post pandemic economic environment presents substantial challenges to businesses operating in Scotland.

The Scottish Business Pledge is only open to employer businesses with a Scottish base. Charities, businesses with no employees in Scotland, and sole-proprietor businesses are not eligible. The Scottish Business Pledge is self-policing, the onus is on the business to advise the SBP team if they no longer meet the eligibility criteria. The implementation approach is described as light touch and voluntary.

We will report to the Scottish Parliament on an annual basis on progress against the actions in the Fair Work Action Plan as set out in the Fair Work measurement framework.

For further information see:

• National Strategy for Economic Transformation - Scotland's National Strategy for Economic Transformation - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)
• Adult lifetime skills: a literature review - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)
• Post School Education , Research and Skills Purpose and Principles - Post-school education, research and skills - purpose and principles - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)
• Independent Review of Scotland’s Skills Landscape - Fit for the Future: developing a post-school learning system to fuel economic transformation - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)
• Lifetime Skills Offer – Evidence and conclusions paper to be published Autumn 2023, including summary of the work by the Poverty Alliance.
• National Strategy for Economic Transformation - Scotland's National Strategy for Economic Transformation - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)
• Fair Work Action Plan - Fair Work action plan: becoming a leading Fair Work nation by 2025 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Relevant National Outcomes

• We have a globally competitive, entrepreneurial, inclusive and sustainable economy.
• We are well educated, skilled and able to contribute to society.
• We have thriving and innovative businesses, with quality jobs and Fair work for everyone.

Relevant Sustainable Development Goals

• 8 - Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.
• 9 - Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation.

B) Equality in the Workplace

Recommendation(s) and Responses

Relevant section(s) of the Scottish Government’s October 2022 UPR Position Statement

• 8(F) – Equality in the Workplace
• 8(F)(i) – Gender Equality in the Workplace
• 8(F)(ii) – Anti-Racism in the Workplace
• 8(F)(iii) – Disability Equality and BSL in the Workplace

Recent Progress and Next Steps

Equality in the Workplace

The right to just and favourable conditions of work, including pay, is established in the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights^[169], and as such, the Scottish Government’s commitment to Fair Work is central to our economic strategy.

Our vision, shared with the Fair Work Convention^[170], is for Scotland to be a leading Fair Work Nation by 2025, where fair work drives success, wellbeing and prosperity for individuals, businesses, organisations, and society.

On 09 December 2022 we published our refreshed Fair Work Action Plan^[171]. This brings together our original Fair Work^[172], Gender Pay Gap^[173], and Disabled People’s Employment action plans^[174], along with the actions from our new Anti-Racist Employment Strategy^[175]. It includes actions being taken forward by the Scottish Government and various public bodies, including to:

• encourage employers to offer appropriate effective voice channels;
• support strong trade unions and promote collective bargaining;
• continue to apply Fair Work conditionality to as much of our public spending as we can, within the limits on devolved competence;
• continue to reduce the gender pay gap, halving the disability employment gap, reduce labour market inequalities for racialised minorities, and reduce intersectional barriers.

As many employers return to a hybrid working model, we will build on the progress made in terms of flexible working, which has benefited many disabled workers.

We will develop and promote good practice guidance for employers to showcase the successful application of positive action measures as per the Equality Act 2010^[176], giving particular attention to sex, pregnancy, race, age and disability by the end of 2024.

While employment law remains reserved to the UK Government, we will use our Fair Work policy to promote fairer work practices across the labour market in Scotland.

Using the levers we have available we have:

• Increased the number of accredited real Living Wage employers from 14 in 2014 to over 3,400 in 2023. Some 64,000 workers in Scotland have had a pay rise as a result of accreditation, making a real impact for people in the lowest paid jobs. The Scottish Government continues its long held commitment to payment of the Real Living Wage and the benefits it brings to Scotland's economy and people. It is a committed Accredited Living Wage Employer, and promotes payment of the Real Living Wage by funding to the Scottish Living Wage Accreditation Initiative. The Real Living Wage applies to all employees aged 18 and over. It is calculated according to the basic cost of living and takes account of the adequacy of household incomes for achieving an acceptable minimum living standard.
• A lower full-time median Gender Pay Gap than the UK as a whole since 2003 and a lower overall median pay gap than the UK as a whole since 1997.
• Reduced the Disability Employment Gap by 5.5 percentage points from our baseline year (2016), ensuring we are on course to meet the target of it being halved to 18.7 percentage points by 2038.
• Attached Fair Work First criteria to some £4 billion of public funding since 2019. This includes criteria to address gender pay gaps and create more diverse and inclusive workplaces and criteria asking employers to offer flexible working from day one of employment.

Gender Equality in the Workplace

Current work also includes delivery of the Workplace Equality Fund^[177], first launched in 2018, which aims to remove labour market barriers for certain priority groups including women across different sectors of the Scottish economy by supporting employers to improve their policies and practice in addressing workplace inequality. For 2022-23, 13 projects received funding of over £750,000.

Scottish Ministers remain committed to improving access to flexible working for all sectors of the economy as an important means to help people balance work and manage commitments such as care or health conditions without dropping out of the workplace with the loss of income, experience and skills that this entails and in turn to enable businesses to recruit and retain a wider pool of talent. To support this in 2022/23, we provided £222,000 in funding to flexible working experts, Flexibility Works and have committed a further £127,000 so far this year.

Our 2023 Programme for Government commits to provide three days of paid leave to families who sadly experience miscarriage or stillbirth. We will work to implement this across the public sector and call on the UK Government to make the necessary changes to employment law to make this available for everyone.

From Jan 2021 – March 2023 the Scottish Government provided over £2.8 million as part of our Women Returners Programmes^[178] funding through which over 2,100 women have been given support to help with their route back to work following a career break. This fulfils our 2018/19 Programme for Government commitment to support over 2000 women by the end of the 2022-23 financial year. Funding for this programme ended on 31 March 2023 with women able to access tailored employability support provision through our devolved employability services such as No One Left Behind, Parental Employability Support Fund and Fair Start Scotland^[179].

Anti-Racism in the Workplace

In December 2022 we published our Anti-Racist Employment Strategy, alongside the refreshed Fair Work Action Plan. The Strategy seeks to respond to the scale and challenge of institutional racism, supporting employers to take an anti-racist and intersectional approach to policies and practices. It provides practical guidance and case studies to support employers to remove barriers for racialised minorities in recruitment, retention and progression; improve ethnicity workforce data; and build fair, diverse and inclusive workplaces.

Commitments set out in the refreshed Fair Work Action Plan further underpin the Strategy and include action to:

• evaluate the Minority Ethnic Recruitment Toolkit^[180] which was published in 2020, to ensure it continues to support employers in their recruitment of people from racialised minority backgrounds.
• develop the next stage of our Anti-Racism Workplace Training Framework to support public and private employers to assess their own training needs and provide learning pathways that will build capability of employers to address racial inequality in the workplace.
• develop guidance to show how employers have used positive action to address under-representation, retention and progression of staff in their workforce.
• encourage and support public sector leadership to build an understanding of institutional racism and its impact and address the recommendations of the Scottish Parliament Equalities and Human Rights’ Committee’s inquiry into race equality, employment and skills.

Disability Equality and BSL in the Workplace

The Fair Work Action Plan – firmly embedding the social model of disability - ensures that we take an intersectional approach where possible to tackle the key structural labour market inequalities faced by disabled people and other groups, many of which have been further exacerbated because of COVID-19.

Organisations have a legal duty under the Equality Act 2010 not to discriminate based on disability and to make reasonable adjustments in respect of disabled job applicants and employees.

The Workplace Equality Fund^[181] is focused on providing financial support for employers to address longstanding barriers in the labour market that are experienced by particular priority groups, including disabled people. The fund supports collaborative projects which seek to improve equality-related outcomes for priority groups and create a more inclusive working environment.

We have continued our work to simplify the employability system by setting out the case for further change through the development of No One Left Behind, which will reach the next stage of implementation when referrals to Scotland’s current devolved employability service Fair Start Scotland end on 31 March 2024. No One Left Behind will deliver on our devolved responsibilities, to provide employability support for those at risk of long term unemployment and disabled people.

Fair Start Scotland (FSS) supports disabled people and those with mental health conditions through Supported Employment and Individual Placement Support. Since launching in 2018, a similar proportion of FSS participants have reported a disability (44%) as reported not having a disability (47%), while this was unknown for the remaining 9%. The proportion of disabled participants has varied across years with the highest proportion (55%) in year 1 and the lowest (32%) in year 3, where an impact on the collection of equalities data in general was observed following the move away from face to face service delivery due to Covid-19. There may also have been a direct impact from Covid-19 policies such as shielding. In year 4, the proportion of disabled participants increased to 47%. In year 5 to date, the proportion of disabled participants is 45% though it was lower in the most recent quarter at 40%.

For current No One Left Behind delivery, 14% of participants accessing support reported having a disability. See Background Information for disability definition. Unlike that observed with gender and ethnicity, there is little variation between younger (under 25; 14%) and older (25 and over; 15%) age groups. The proportion of participants reporting a disability has been fairly consistent with the exception of a marked decrease across year 2 to 11% before increasing to 14% in year 3. The proportion increased to 17% in year 4 so far, with the highest proportion of participants to date at 19% in the latest quarter (July – September 2022).

The lived experience of disabled people in the labour market, including the impacts of the pandemic, directly informed our refreshed Fair Work Action plan, and will continue to be going forward with the implementation phase. Actions and ongoing work include:

• Fair Start Scotland (FSS) provides individual, person-centred support to the long term unemployed, disabled people, those with long term health conditions, and those facing other barriers to moving into and sustaining fair work.
• FSS also provides specialist support through either Supported Employment or Individual Placement and Support, the latter proven to be particularly effective for participants with significant mental health conditions.
• Scottish and Local Government will work with service users and stakeholders to consider the best way to deliver No one Left Behind specialist employability support within a local governance structure to deliver a system that is more person-centred, tailored and responsive to the needs of people of all ages who want help and support on their journey towards and into work, particularly people with health conditions, disabled people and others who are disadvantaged in the labour market.
• The Workplace Equality Fund is focused on providing financial support for employers to address longstanding barriers in the labour market that are experienced by particular priority groups, including, women, racialised minorities and disabled people. The fund supports collaborative projects which seek to improve equality-related outcomes for priority groups and create a more inclusive working environment.
• The Scottish Government will undertake an internal equal pay audit examining pay gaps by disability, gender, race and age by March 2024. We will act on findings to review and refresh our recruitment and retention policies to address workplace inequalities by end of 2025.
• By end of 2023 we will update the Fair Work First criteria to better reflect priority action required to address labour market inequalities faced by disabled people, women, and people from racialised minorities - ensuring people can enter, remain and progress in work.
• We are developing and publishing an Evidence plan and Measurement Framework to accompany the delivery of the FWAP.

Relevant National Outcomes

• We live in communities that are inclusive, empowered, resilient and safe.
• We have a globally competitive, entrepreneurial, inclusive and sustainable economy.
• We have thriving and innovative businesses, with quality jobs and fair work for everyone.
• We respect, protect and fulfil human rights and live free from discrimination.

Relevant Sustainable Development Goals

• 8 - Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.
• 10 - Reduce inequality within and among countries.
• 16 - Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.

C) Human Rights Due Diligence

Recommendation(s) and Responses

Relevant section(s) of the October 2022 UPR Position Statement

• 8(I) – International Trade

Recent Progress and Next Steps

Discretionary measures against Russia

Taking a principle-based approach to trade has never been more important in view of Russia’s continued illegal invasion of Ukraine. Trade and economic relationships with Russia have been a focus of the co-ordinated worldwide response. The Scottish Government therefore – and in addition to the UK’s legally binding sanctions regime – led calls for businesses to sever their links to Russia and made clear that the Scottish Government and its enterprise agencies will use all available powers not to support trade and investment activity with Russia.

Our economic agencies undertake a range of checks on businesses to identify any ongoing investment, trading, or other links with Russia, and steps they have taken to withdraw from them, while recognising where it may not always be feasible to do so, for example due to contractual obligations or if staff safety might be jeopardised.

Relevant National Outcomes

• We have a globally competitive, entrepreneurial, inclusive and sustainable economy.
• We are open, connected and make a positive contribution internationally.

Relevant Sustainable Development Goals

• 8 - Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.
• 10 - Reduce inequality within and among countries.
• 16 - Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.