Work & Workers
Wage Floors • No Unpaid Overtime • Full Sick Pay from Day One
Right to Disconnect • No Surveillance • Napping Allowed
Equal Parental Leave • Tips Are Yours • 24/7 Economy
The Principle
Work exists to sustain life, not to extract from it.
The current employment model in the United Kingdom is not a labour market. It is a compliance system with a payslip. Workers are treated as disposable resources, subjected to zero-hours exploitation, salaried servitude, performative appraisals, and a benefits floor so low it fails to sustain basic human life.
A nurse who saves lives earns less than a management consultant who produces PowerPoint slides. A carer who keeps someone’s grandmother alive and dignified earns less than the minimum needed to heat their own home. A Deliveroo rider who cycles through rain and traffic to deliver someone’s dinner is classified as ‘self-employed’ so the company can avoid paying them sick pay, holiday, or a pension. A warehouse worker’s toilet breaks are timed by an algorithm. A call centre worker’s keystrokes are logged. A salaried office worker’s ‘flexible’ contract means they work 50 hours and get paid for 37.5.
BUILD replaces this entire framework with a single covenant: adults will be treated as adults, output matters more than hours observed, every worker is a human being first and an employee second, and no employer profits from a system that fails to sustain the life of the person doing the work.
This charter applies to all employers operating within the United Kingdom, without exception. There are no opt-outs, no transitional exemptions, and no sector carve-outs.
Pillar 1: Wage Floors
1.1 — The Structure
All employment contracts will be paid on an hourly basis, calculated and visible on a daily and weekly cycle. Every hour of labour is compensated. No salaried contract may be used to obscure unpaid overtime. Weekly pay statements must show total hours worked, hourly rate, daily totals, gross pay, and all deductions itemised.
Standard Minimum: £15 per hour
This is the floor for all workers. No person in England will work for less than £15 per hour. This is a liveable wage — not a minimum existence, but a wage that allows a person to pay rent, eat properly, heat their home, and participate in normal life without relying on benefits to top up what their employer refuses to pay.
Emergency Services and Clinical Staff: £25 per hour
Police officers, firefighters, paramedics, NHS nurses, doctors, and other frontline emergency and clinical staff will be paid a minimum of £25 per hour. These are the people who run toward the danger, work through the night, and keep other people alive. The current model — where an experienced paramedic earns less than a graduate management trainee — is an insult to every person who chose public service over private profit.
At £25 per hour, the NHS and emergency services become competitive with the private sector and agency market. The current situation, where the NHS pays a nurse £15 per hour on a permanent contract and then pays an agency £40 per hour for a locum to fill the gap when the nurse leaves for better pay, costs more and delivers less. Pay the permanent staff properly and the agency bill disappears.
Carers: £500 per month
Family carers — people who provide unpaid care to disabled, elderly, or chronically ill family members — will receive a minimum of £500 per month, a floor of £125 per week. This is not a benefit. It is recognition that unpaid care saves the state billions per year. The current Carer’s Allowance of £86.45 per week is a pittance that does not cover the costs of caring, let alone compensate the carer for the work they do. The £500 is a floor and it is uprated every April in line with the annual benefits uprating, so it never erodes against the cost of living — but it never falls below £125 a week. Professional care workers fall under the £15 standard minimum as employees.
1.2 — 5% Annual Rise
All hourly rates increase by a minimum of 5% per calendar year, applied automatically on 1st April. This is a floor, not a ceiling. The rise is non-negotiable, non-discretionary, and not contingent on performance review, appraisal outcome, or employer profitability. The performance appraisal system as a mechanism for determining pay is abolished. Employers may conduct development conversations at the worker’s request, but these have no bearing on compensation.
Any employer failing to apply the 5% floor is liable for the shortfall plus a penalty of 200% of the unpaid amount per affected worker.
1.3 — Unpaid Overtime Is Wage Theft
No employer may require, request, or incentivise work beyond recorded and paid hours. Any worker present at the employer’s request or on the employer’s premises for work purposes is on the clock. Travel between sites during a working period is on the clock. ‘Team building,’ mandatory social events, and required training are on the clock. Unpaid overtime is wage theft and will be prosecuted as such.
Pillar 2: Human Scheduling
2.1 — Abolish Fixed Working Hours
The 9-to-5 working day is abolished as a default expectation. Workers may choose their own working hours within the operational window of the business. If a worker wishes to begin at 06:00, they may. If they wish to begin at 13:00 and work until 22:00, they may. Employers operate on an output and coverage basis, not a presenteeism basis. If the work is done and the shift is covered, the how and when are the worker’s business.
2.2 — Working Days Per Week
Workers may choose to work 4, 5, 6, or 7 days per week. This is the worker’s choice, not the employer’s. No worker is penalised for choosing fewer days, and no worker is prevented from choosing more if they wish to earn more. The key constraint is coverage: the worker’s responsibilities must be met and their workload current.
2.3 — 60-Minute Breaks and Napping
The statutory 30-minute lunch break is replaced with a minimum 60-minute break. No more eating at your desk while answering emails and calling it a lunch break. Sixty minutes, away from the workstation, to eat, rest, and function as a human being.
Napping at work is allowed. A 20-minute nap after four hours of focused work improves cognitive function, reaction time, and decision-making more than caffeine. NASA proved this. Japan institutionalised it. Britain pretends it doesn’t happen and calls it laziness. Under BUILD, employers must provide a quiet rest room where workers can nap during their break without stigma, without judgment, and without it appearing in a performance review.
No employer may monitor, time, or restrict toilet breaks. This should not require legislation, but apparently it does.
2.4 — Zero-Hours Contracts: Abolished
Zero-hours contracts are abolished with immediate effect. Every worker has a guaranteed minimum number of weekly hours specified in their contract. If the employer cannot provide those hours, the employer pays for them anyway. The risk of demand fluctuation belongs to the business, not the worker.
Pillar 3: Holiday and Sick Pay
3.1 — Unlimited Paid Holiday
The statutory 25-day holiday allowance is abolished and replaced with unlimited paid holiday. A worker may take holiday of any duration provided their workload is current and coverage is arranged. No employer may refuse a holiday request except where genuine operational coverage cannot be arranged, and in such cases the employer must offer an alternative date within 14 days.
Unlimited does not mean taking the piss. Three months on, one week off is fair. Two weeks off, one week on, two weeks off again is not. The principle is trust: adults are trusted to manage their own rest, and employers are trusted to raise genuine coverage concerns. The ‘use it or lose it’ policy is prohibited — workers do not forfeit rest because they were too busy to take it.
3.2 — Full Sick Pay from Day One
Statutory Sick Pay is abolished and replaced with full pay from day one of absence. No waiting days. No reduced rate. No SSP fallback of £116.75 per week. Sick pay is calculated at the worker’s average hourly rate multiplied by their average daily hours over the preceding 12 weeks.
No GP note required for absences of fewer than 7 consecutive days. Self-certification is sufficient. GPs have enough to do without writing permission slips for adults with a cold. No ‘return to work interviews,’ capability hearings, or Bradford Factor scoring. Sickness is not a disciplinary matter.
Any employer that does not provide full sick pay from day one has their business operating licence revoked. This is not a fine. This is a licence condition. No sick pay, no business licence. Compliance restores the licence. Non-compliance ends the business.
3.3 — Equal Parental Leave
Parental leave is equalised. Both parents receive the same number of weeks at the same rate of pay, regardless of gender. A father has the same right to bond with a newborn as a mother. The current system — where mothers get up to 39 weeks and fathers get two weeks at £185 — is a structural assumption about who raises children. BUILD does not make that assumption.
Parental leave is paid at 90% of the worker’s average earnings for the first six weeks, then at the statutory rate (which BUILD will substantially increase) for the remainder. Both parents may take their leave simultaneously, consecutively, or in blocks, at their choice. The employer does not get to decide when a parent bonds with their child.
Pillar 4: No Surveillance
Employers may monitor output and work quality. They may not monitor the worker as a person.
4.1 — Banned Surveillance Methods
The following are prohibited in all workplaces: keystroke logging, mouse movement tracking, screenshot capture, webcam monitoring, algorithmic productivity scoring, bathroom break timing, and any software or system that monitors the worker’s physical presence, movements, or behaviour rather than the quality and completion of their work.
GPS tracking of workers is prohibited except where the role involves driving a company vehicle during working hours, and tracking must cease when the shift ends. Any employer found to be covertly monitoring workers beyond the scope of this section faces an immediate fine of £50,000 per affected worker.
4.2 — Right to Disconnect
When a worker’s shift or working period ends, they are unreachable. No emails. No calls. No WhatsApp messages from managers. No Slack notifications. The worker’s personal time is inviolable. Any communication sent by an employer outside of the worker’s chosen working hours creates no obligation to respond and shall not be referenced in any performance or conduct matter.
Employers requiring genuine on-call availability pay a standing on-call rate of no less than 25% of the worker’s hourly rate for every hour of on-call time, in addition to full pay for any hours actually worked.
4.3 — Depot and Warehouse Facilities
Every depot, warehouse, distribution centre, and logistics hub must provide proper facilities for drivers and workers: clean toilets, functioning showers, a rest area with seating, hot water for drinks, microwave or kitchen facilities for meals, and secure parking. All facilities must be cleaned daily. A driver who delivers the goods that stock every shelf in the country should not be pissing in a bottle because the depot will not provide a clean toilet.
Failure to provide and maintain adequate facilities is an automatic licence condition violation. The depot closes until it complies. The goods can wait. The driver’s dignity cannot.
Pillar 5: Gig Economy — Worker Chooses
5.1 — The Two Pathways
Every gig economy platform operating in the UK must offer every worker a genuine choice between two pathways:
Pathway A: Employed
Full employment rights. Minimum hourly wage (£15/hr floor). Full sick pay from day one. Holiday entitlement. Pension contributions. Fixed or flexible shifts. All the protections of this charter. The platform is the employer. The worker is an employee.
Pathway B: Contractor
Genuine flexibility. The worker chooses when, where, and how much they work. No fixed shifts. No obligation to accept work. But with a floor: a minimum hourly earnings guarantee (if a Deliveroo rider works for two hours and only gets one delivery, the platform pays the minimum rate for both hours, not just the delivery fee). Plus accident insurance funded by the platform, equipment and maintenance cost contributions, and a per-delivery or per-job pension contribution.
The worker picks. Not the platform. The platform must offer both options and must not incentivise one over the other through differential pricing, preferential job allocation, or any other mechanism that steers workers toward the cheaper option. If 80% of workers choose employment, the platform employs 80% of its workers. That is the market deciding, not BUILD.
5.2 — No Surveillance on Gig Workers Either
The surveillance ban (Pillar 4) applies to gig workers in both pathways. No tracking toilet breaks. No timing rest periods. No algorithmic penalties for declining work, taking breaks, or working at a pace the algorithm considers suboptimal. A Deliveroo rider is a human being delivering food, not a data point in an optimisation engine.
Pillar 6: Tips Are Yours
6.1 — No Tip Pooling Without Consent
A tip given to a specific worker belongs to that worker. Not to the team. Not to the house. Not to the employer. If a customer tips a server because the server provided excellent service, that money is the server’s. It does not go into a pool, get divided between the kitchen, the bar, the floor staff, and the manager who wasn’t even in the room.
Voluntary tip pooling — where all workers in a team agree to share tips equally — is permitted if genuinely voluntary. Compulsory tip pooling, management deductions from tips, and any system where the employer takes a percentage of tips for ‘administration’ are prohibited.
6.2 — Tipping Is Optional
BUILD does not support the Americanisation of tipping culture. A tip is a voluntary expression of appreciation for good service. It is not a subsidy that allows employers to pay below minimum wage. It is not an expected obligation that creates social pressure at the point of payment. It is not a service charge added automatically to the bill.
Under BUILD’s wage floors, every worker earns a liveable wage regardless of tips. A tip is a bonus for good work, not a survival mechanism. This is how tipping should work: optional, appreciated, and entirely the customer’s choice.
Pillar 7: The 24/7 Economy
7.1 — Universal Operating Hours
All retail, banking (including physical branches), public services, GP surgeries (see NHS Reform Charter), council offices, post offices, leisure centres (see NHS Reform Charter), and essential services will operate on a 24-hour, 7-day basis. Staffing is provided through voluntary shift selection under the flexible scheduling provisions of Pillar 2.
When a bank is open at 21:00, no worker needs to take a day off to visit it. When a GP offers appointments at midnight, no parent needs to choose between their child’s health and their shift. When a council office operates on Saturday, bureaucracy stops being a full-time job for the people it is supposed to serve. The economy does not slow under this model. It accelerates, because dead hours disappear and human activity distributes naturally across the full day.
7.2 — Coins at 1am
The 24/7 economy does not work if the cash infrastructure does not work. A laundrette is open at 1am but the person who needs it cannot get £1 coins because every cash machine dispenses only notes and every shop is closed. ATMs must offer coin dispensing, or supermarkets operating 24/7 must provide change on request. The right to cash (see Life, Liberty & Freedom Charter) includes the right to coins, at any hour, because some machines still need them and some people still use them.
Pillar 8: Redundancy and Termination
8.1 — No Dismissal Without Cause
No worker may be dismissed without genuine, documented cause. ‘Restructuring’ that replaces human workers with automation triggers the Humans-First provisions of the National Restoration Strategy Act. Fire-and-rehire practices are prohibited — no employer may dismiss a worker and offer to rehire them on worse terms. That is not restructuring. It is extortion.
8.2 — Redundancy Terms
Any genuine redundancy includes a minimum of 12 weeks’ pay at full rate plus 2 weeks per year of service, with no cap. A worker with 20 years of service receives 12 weeks plus 40 weeks — a full year’s pay. They gave the company 20 years. The company gives them a year to find the next thing. That is proportionate.
8.3 — Enforcement
Any employer violating any provision of this charter — wage floors, sick pay, surveillance bans, holiday rights, parental leave, tip protections, or termination rules — faces enforcement by the National Revenue and Stability Authority with full powers to audit payroll, inspect contracts, investigate complaints, and prosecute violations. Workers may report breaches anonymously. All investigations conclude within 28 days.
No sick pay from day one? Business licence revoked. Unpaid overtime? Wage theft prosecution. Covert surveillance? £50,000 per affected worker. Tip theft? Criminal prosecution. Fire and rehire? Prohibited and void. The rules are simple. The consequences are real.
The Workplace BUILD Will Deliver
These eight pillars form a single, integrated employment framework. Every pillar treats workers as adults, pays them fairly, and removes the mechanisms that employers use to extract unpaid labour, surveil behaviour, and avoid responsibility.
Every worker earns at least £15 per hour. Emergency services and clinical staff earn at least £25. Wages rise 5% per year automatically. Unpaid overtime is prosecuted as wage theft. Zero-hours contracts are abolished. Performance appraisals do not determine pay.
Workers choose their own hours, their own days, and their own breaks. Sixty minutes minimum, not thirty. Napping is allowed. Toilet breaks are not timed. Desks are for working. Break rooms are for breaks. Quiet rooms are for rest.
Holiday is unlimited within reason. Sick pay is full pay from day one — or the business loses its licence. Parental leave is equal regardless of gender. Tips belong to the person who earned them, not the team, the house, or the employer.
No keystroke logging. No webcam monitoring. No algorithm timing your toilet breaks. No messages from your manager at 11pm. When the shift ends, you are unreachable. Every depot and warehouse has clean toilets, showers, a rest area, and kitchen facilities, cleaned daily.
Gig workers choose: full employment or genuine contractor flexibility with an earnings floor, insurance, and pension contributions. Either way, no surveillance. Deliveroo riders are human beings, not data points.
And the economy runs 24/7 — banks, councils, post offices, GPs, leisure centres — so that nobody needs to take a day off work to access a service that should have been open in the evening. Including the coins to use the laundrette at 1am.
Work exists to sustain life, not to extract from it. Adults will be treated as adults. Output matters, not hours observed. Every worker is a human being first and an employee second. BUILD will make sure every employer remembers that.
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BUILD UK
builduk.club
August 2026
Download this charter as a document (.docx) — the paper as written. What follows is the same text, readable.