Ministers urged to increase basic rate of UK statutory sick pay
Ministers are under pressure to increase the basic rate of statutory sick pay (SSP) from £3 an hour for a full-time worker, amid concerns that hundreds of thousands of people a year are left without adequate financial support to pay essential bills while off work.The government will launch a consultation on Monday to coincide with the second reading of its employment rights bill, under which workers will get paid sick leave from day one, with those on earnings below the threshold of £123 a week eligible.Campaigners have welcomed the changes, but they want ministers to go further and raise sick pay, which is fixed at £116 a week and pegged to the inflation rate.They argue that the low rate pushes vulnerable people into poverty.In a letter to Keir Starmer, a group of charities including Citizens Advice, Macmillan Cancer Support, Mind and Maggie’s called on the government to amend the bill so ministers can increase sick pay amid the worsening health of working-age people.
“Hundreds of thousands of working people who are each year diagnosed with infectious diseases, cancer, mental health problems or serious injuries will still find themselves without adequate financial support to pay essential bills like food, rent and heating,” they wrote.“There is a wide-ranging body of evidence, medical, academic and from leading UK thinktanks and charities, that suggests the current SSP system harms workers and is self-defeating for employers and the government alike.“This situation risks holding back the government’s laudable mission to grow the economy and bolster our NHS.”The intervention came as a report by WPI Economics, led by the welfare reform expert Matthew Oakley, found that increasing the rate could reduce days off by stemming the flow of unwell workers on to out-of-work benefits and reducing prolonged absence caused by deteriorating health.Sign up to First EditionOur morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it mattersafter newsletter promotionOakley found that the move could result in a net £4.
1bn financial benefit to business, the Treasury and the wider economy by increasing productivity and having fewer periods of long absence and better public health outcomes because people would not be spreading illness by coming into work sick.Amanda Walters from the Centre for Progressive Change, which is leading the campaign, said: “Most of us try to battle on when we’re sick, but sometimes we know that going to work will only make things worse, we’ll end up sicker and less productive.“It would be a massive missed opportunity not to address the rate of statutory sick pay now.The government should ensure no worker risks their health for want of a decent sick pay system.”Under current plans a full-time worker on the average UK salary would still lose £419 net in the first week of illness, even with day-one sick pay rights, putting them below the minimum acceptable standard of living, according to University of Loughborough research.
Starmer told the TUC conference in 2021 – when sick pay stood at £95,85 a week – that a Labour government would not only guarantee all workers received it, but increase the level at which it was paid,He said: “We have one of the lowest rates of sick pay in Europe,It’s not good enough,So as well as guaranteeing sick pay, Labour’s new deal will increase it as well.
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As Silicon Valley eyes US election, beware Elon Musk and the tech bros with political nous | John Naughton
Way back in the 1960s “the personal is political” was a powerful slogan capturing the reality of power dynamics within marriages. Today, an equally meaningful slogan might be that “the technological is political”, to reflect the way that a small number of global corporations have acquired political clout within liberal democracies. If anyone doubted that, then the recent appearance of Elon Musk alongside Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania provided useful confirmation of how technology has moved centre-stage in American politics. Musk may be a manchild with a bad tweeting habit, but he also owns the company that is providing internet connectivity to Ukrainian troops on the battlefield; and his rocket has been chosen by Nasa to be the vehicle to land the next Americans on the moon.Sign up to ObservedAnalysis and opinion on the week's news and culture brought to you by the best Observer writers after newsletter promotionThere was a time when the tech industry wasn’t much interested in politics
Quit if you don’t like our office-working policy, Amazon executive suggests
A senior Amazon executive has suggested that staff who do not like the company’s new five-days-a-week office-working policy should quit.The head of the tech company’s cloud computing business told an internal meeting that if employees did not support the change they could look for a job elsewhere, according to a transcript reviewed by Reuters.Matt Garman, the chief executive of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) unit, said nine out of 10 workers he had spoken to supported the policy, which is effective for all office-based staff from 2 January, barring those with exceptional circumstances.He indicated that anyone unhappy with the retreat from home-working should leave. “If there are people who just don’t work well in that environment and don’t want to, that’s OK, there are other companies around,” said Garman, in the comments reported by Reuters
AI-generated child sexual abuse imagery reaching ‘tipping point’, says watchdog
Child sexual abuse imagery generated by artificial intelligence tools is becoming more prevalent on the open web and reaching a “tipping point”, according to a safety watchdog.The Internet Watch Foundation said the amount of AI-made illegal content it had seen online over the past six months had already exceeded the total for the previous year.The organisation, which runs a UK hotline but also has a global remit, said almost all the content was found on publicly available areas of the internet and not on the dark web, which must be accessed by specialised browsers.The IWF’s interim chief executive, Derek Ray-Hill, said the level of sophistication in the images indicated that the AI tools used had been trained on images and videos of real victims. “Recent months show that this problem is not going away and is in fact getting worse,” he said
AI mediation tool may help reduce culture war rifts, say researchers
Artificial intelligence could help reduce some of the most contentious culture war divisions through a mediation process, researchers claim.Experts say a system that can create group statements that reflect majority and minority views is able to help people find common ground.Prof Chris Summerfield, a co-author of the research from the University of Oxford, who worked at Google DeepMind at the time the study was conducted, said the AI tool could have multiple purposes.“What I would like to see it used for is to give political leaders in the UK a better sense of what people in the UK really think,” he said, noting surveys gave only limited insights, while forums known as citizens’ assemblies were often costly, logistically challenging and restricted in size.Writing in the journal Science, Summerfield and colleagues from Google DeepMind report how they built the “Habermas Machine” – an AI system named after the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas
Watchdog opens investigation into anti-immigrant posts on Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta must answer “serious questions” about its handling of anti-immigration material, according to the company’s content watchdog, as it opened an investigation into two Facebook posts.The Oversight Board is investigating Meta’s decision to keep the posts online after acknowledging that it receives a significant number of complaints from users over content that shares anti-immigrant views.Helle Thorning-Schmidt, co-chair of the board and a former Danish prime minister, said it was “critical” to get the balance right between free speech and protection of vulnerable groups.“The high number of appeals we get on immigration-related content from across the EU tells us there are serious questions to ask about how the company handles issues related to this, including the use of coded speech,” she said in a statement.The first case being investigated by the board is focused on a meme posted by the administrator of a Facebook page that describes itself as the official account of Poland’s far-right coalition party Confederation
Meta fires staff for ‘using free meal vouchers to buy household goods’
Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has reportedly fired about 24 staff at its Los Angeles offices for using their $25 (£19) meal credits to buy items such as toothpaste, laundry detergent and wine glasses.The tech firm, which is worth £1.2tn and also owns the messaging platform WhatsApp, is said to have dismissed workers last week after an investigation discovered staff had been abusing the system, including sending food home when they were not in the office.That included one unnamed worker on a $400,000 salary, who said they had used their meal credits to buy household goods and groceries such as toothpaste and tea.On the anonymous messaging platform Blind, they wrote: “On days where I would not be eating at the office, like if my husband was cooking or if I was grabbing dinner with friends, I figured I ought not to waste the dinner credit
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