New research has found that the primary reason for workers turning to emergency and community food support is the poor quality of available employment.
The research by the University of Liverpool Professor Lydia Hayes and Feeding Liverpool’s Dr Naomi Maynard engaged with people using foodbanks and food pantries in Liverpool. 65% of participants, including 76% of those of working age, identified that the root causes of their food insecurity were jobs offering uncertain hours and insufficient pay
; incompatibility of insecure jobs with the demands of parenting; and high levels of mental stress arising from poor quality employment. It was in these circumstances that the inadequacy of welfare support then assumed enormous significance for workers struggling to manage on low income.
The research also found that post-pandemic welfare laws are interacting with inadequate employment rights to embed the risk of food insecurity in agreements to work in low-wage sectors.
Professor Lydia Hayes, Professor of Labour Rights at the University of Liverpool said:
“Record numbers of workers are using foodbanks and this is a symptom of inadequate employment rights (which have facilitated the rise of insecure employment to record levels) and restrictive trade union laws (which damage the ability of working people to collectively improve their term and conditions). In particular, post-pandemic welfare reforms are interacting with inadequate employment rights and effectively force growing number of workers to take any job, in any sector, under any terms and conditions.”
Since the pandemic, a policy of ‘in-work progression’ typically requires low-waged workers, who already have a job, to face benefit sanctions unless they take all reasonable actions to increase their hours or to take on an additional job until they are earning the equivalent of 35-hours a week at National Living Wage. It means workers are increasingly exposed to higher volumes of poor quality employment. This leaves them reliant on access to welfare benefits, enables poor quality employment to thrive and exposes them to the risk of food insecurity.
