Hello and welcome to The Bunker, your daily need to know on news and politics. Today, work. Is it worth it?

And if not, why not? This week, Labour is locked in an internal battle over cutting the welfare bill,

specifically freezing disability benefits. As we record, this, Kirstarmer is facing possibly the biggest

rebellion of his premiership so far. Earlier this week, he told Labour MPs, we found ourselves

in a worst of all world situation with the wrong incentives, discouraging people from working, and the

taxpayer funding a spiralling bill. But the answer often comes back. How can you blame people

for making those choices when so often work just doesn't work for them? In the dying days of the

last government, a report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies described how even under the

Conservatives, taking a full-time

job, it often become an illogical choice. As Bloomberg put it, once taxes are added to lost

benefits, people returning to work can face effective tax rates of 69%. Childcare and travel costs

whittled down what remains, and in some cases people can end up worse off than when they

were unemployed.

The result is that the UK is the only major economy where the employment rates has dropped over the last five years,

with more than 9 million people economically inactive.

Since coming to power labourers announced a £240 million get Britain working plan,

but will the stick of getting people off sickness benefits,

also reviewing employer responsibility to take on people off sickness benefits, also reviewing employer

responsibility to take on people with health issues, work? Is Labor's package of new

employment rights enough of a carrot? Bluntly, how do we make work attractive again?

Joining us today is someone who knows why all this matters. Paul Novak is Secretary General

of the TUC. He first joined a union when he worked part-time at ASDA, age 17. He's worked in a call centre and been a hotel night porter. Before working at a trade union, he'd always been employed on temporary and agency contracts. Hello, Paul. Welcome to the bunker. How you doing? Hi, Andrew. Great. Thanks. yeah. Good to be here. Let's talk about Labor's ideas in a minute. But first, how has taken on full-time or even part-time work been allowed to become so unattractive

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