UK-based Trades Union Congress has called on the government to put an end to insecure work, as part of its response to the Taylor Review on Modern Employment Practices, which is expected later this week.

The TUC, using data from the Office of National Statistics, stated that it estimates that at least 1.8 million insecure workers are at risk of missing out on key rights, including redundancy pay, protection against unfair dismissal, and the right to return to your job after having a baby.

The union added that many more are missing out on rights because their bosses have wrongly classified them as self-employed.

“The insecure work free-for-all has to end,” TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady said. Despite the protections provided under the Agency Workers Regulations which obliges employers to pay agency workers the same as comparable full-time staff, O’Grady claims that “Agency workers are being treated like second-class citizens, getting less pay for the same work. And zero-hours contracts leave many workers unable to plan childcare or budget for their weekly shop.”

The TUC is specifically calling for the ban of zero-hours contracts as well as ensuring equal pay for all agency workers, and a crackdown on bogus self-employment. They are also calling for workers to enjoy the same rights as employees, including redundancy pay and family-friendly rights.

The TUC is also calling for trade unions to have access to workplaces as well as increasing resources and power for enforcement, ‘so dodgy employers have nowhere to hide.’

Last year, Matthew Taylor published the Taylor Review which looked into modern employment practices in the UK. The report called for a new category of worker to be created, the ‘Dependent contractor”. These contractors would be eligible for worker rights such as sick leave and paid holiday.

The report did not call for an end to zero-hours contracts. It also stated that it does not want to stop companies using agency staff but proposes to address situations in which companies use agency workers over a longer period of time as a substitute for effective workforce management. The review also backed union calls to end the Swedish Derogation (a legally permitted exception under the Agency Workers Regulations which allows employers to circumvent the obligation to pay agency workers at an equivalent rate to comparable full-time workers) and highlighted the “many positive examples of the role trade unions can play in good employment relations.”