How to start a campaign

The report, Safe Sick Pay: the Case for Change, is being published to mark the launch of the new campaign, and brings together the extensive literature on the need for sick pay reform, based on research by charities, trade unions and the private sector. It also makes the economic case for a better sick pay system that will ensure workers can stay at home to recover, and prevent the spread of illness in workplaces.

Finally, it sets out the three key changes the Safe Sick Pay Campaign is calling for – alongside a range of partners – to create a Safe Sick Pay system that will benefit millions across the UK.

Amanda Walters, Campaign Director of the Safe Sick Pay Campaign, said:

“Whatever work we do, we deserve to know a safe sick pay system is there so that if we get unwell, we can take the time we need to get better.

“For millions of workers – particularly those on low pay and in precarious work such as cleaners and carers – that simply does not exist, and they face having to work through illness, or take time off they cannot afford.

“The Government must urgently fix this broken system to protect workers’ wellbeing, and ensure that everyone can access safe sick pay.”

For more information or to arrange an interview, contact the press office on 07932700515 or [email protected]

Notes to editors:

1. The full report is available here.

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Who gets Statutory Sick Pay?

• A third of workers only get Statutory Sick Pay. They are mainly on low incomes, and often in precarious work. They are more likely to be women, people of colour and from migrant backgrounds.

What about everyone else?

• Around half of employers have their own policies, under which they top up Statutory Sick Pay, usually to your ordinary wages, at least for a while. Nearly two million workers get no sick pay at all, because they don’t earn over £120 per week with any one employer, though many have multiple employers.

How did we get here?

• Statutory Sick Pay was introduced in 1982, but hasn’t kept up with changes to how we work and live. Today, it's nowhere near enough to cover the cost of living.

What happens in other countries?

• The UK has one of the lowest rates of Statutory Sick Pay of any wealthy economy. Elsewhere, particularly in Europe, sick pay is more often in line with earnings, and available from day one of illness. 

What happened during the pandemic?

• The pandemic shone a light on the holes in the sick pay system, and the Government accepted Statutory Sick Pay doesn't work. They scrapped the four-day wait, so everyone could get sick pay from the first day of illness, and created a one-off payment of £500 for low-income workers who needed to isolate. These reforms have been scrapped.

How much would it cost to fix it?

• It would cost an average of £130 per year per employee. This could be a significant cost for small businesses, but the Federation of Small Businesses and CBI have both called for this change. The Government could also make it possible for some businesses to claim sick pay back, as it did during the early stages of the pandemic.

What you can do:

We’re preparing to launch our campaign for better sick pay. Sign up here for updates on how you can get involved.

What we’re calling for:

1. Higher Statutory Sick Pay, in line with living costs, and the living wage.
2. An end to the four-day wait, so everyone can get it from day one of being unwell.
3. Abolition of the earnings threshold, so all workers are entitled to sick pay.

What you can do:

We’ll be launching the campaign soon. Sign up here to stay up to date with campaign news and how you can help bring about better sick pay for everyone.

After the letter was sent, the workers met again to evaluate and decide next steps. We looked at the charts to identify who hadn’t signed the letter, why and who else we needed to speak to, to fill in the gaps. We agreed that we needed to keep up the pressure until the decision on the third runway had been made. Over the next months we carried on doing structure tests and asking our allies to act.

Success!

We met with the airport early December. At that meeting the airport announced they would sign up to become a Living Wage employer! They agreed to giving a pay rise to over 3,200 subcontracted staff, including some pay rises of almost £3 an hour. This was a huge shift from the previous meetings with the airport as workers were beginning to pose a real threat to the airports self-interest to gain the third runway. In a few months we had made far greater gains that in the previous years because we stopped taking shortcuts and focused on deep organising and building the power of the workers.

The mood in Trafalgar square was ominous as we waited for the results of the vote on whether the government were going to rise university tuition fees from £3,000 a year to £9,000 a year. Everyone in the square was cold, tired and hungry. Some people were building fires, some were trying to break into the Treasury, while thousands of others were standing around waiting impatiently for the results.

The last 6 months prior to this point had been relentless. For me, as the Campaigns Officer at the University of Manchester Students’ Union, every waking moment in those months I spent engaging students in Manchester and moving them into action. We marched in Manchester and in London, we occupied the University, we took direct action… we mobilised thousands of students to act. We did everything we could… right?

I suddenly heard a murmur ripple through the square, across the thousands of students kettled there. I took out my phone and saw the headline. We had lost. My heart sunk. And I thought to myself, all that work and dedication amounted to nothing. I cried the whole way home. I locked myself in my room and questioned everything I’d ever believed. Can we actually create change? Is there a way to actually win progressive campaigns? Because so far in my lifetime, I’d not seen that we could.

This question lead me on a quest to find out the answer, and to start exploring who is actually winning progressive campaigns, and how are they doing it. And that is how I came across Organising.

The Solution: Organising

Organising is where you bring a wide range of people and organisations from a community or workplace together to build a unified body. By coming together in this way that community or workplace then has enough weight behind it in order to challenge politicians and companies to act on the issues impacting that community. I’m sure many of us have experienced how difficult it is to get listened to when you are the only one person speaking up, or you are just a few people. In Organising you bring together hundreds or thousands of people together so that you cannot be ignored, and you can further your collective agenda.

There are 3 key differences between Organising and the campaign we did as students in 2010.

1. Build a broad coalition

In Organising you want to build broad coalitions, rather than mobilise just one facet of the population such as students. You do this so that you can have more strength. The more diverse your coalition is the more likely it is that politicians will care about what you have to say. And they are less able to box you in as one interest group among others. This way they can also not pit you against each other.

2. Research the interests of your opponent

Knowing your opponent’s interests and Achilles’ heel is key to Organising. Once you have done enough desk based and on the ground research then the actions you do should be aimed at using this knowledge to your advantage. For instance, in 2010 it would have strengthened our hand to have a real understanding of the interests of those in government so that we could focus our actions on trying to become a threat to this.   

3. Be strategic

By doing a Power Analysis of the fight you are in, and what you need to do in order to win and shift the power balance, you can form your strategy and decide on specific tactics that will get you to where you want to be. We often decide to take particular actions, like marching or occupying a University, because it is familiar and what we know. In Organising, on the other hand, what we are interested in is what actions will be effective.

I don’t know for sure that having used an Organising model in 2010 would have led to a win. But what I do know is that since I became an Organiser in 2013 I finally started winning campaigns and have seen that you can create change, and that by using this methodology you can win progressive campaigns.