Employment Rights Bill: Unions must fight to strengthen workers’ rights
Trade union leaders have been lining up to extol the Labour government’s Employment Rights Bill, as secretary of state for business and trade Jonathan Reynolds gave an update on the its progress through Parliament.
But inherent in the responses of the right-wing union leaders is agreeing with UK Prime Minister Starmer’s mantra of partnership between unions and mythical ‘better and responsible’ employers, conniving in attempting to pull the wool over workers’ eyes that Keir Starmer’s Labour will deliver for them.
The Trades Union Congress (TUC) federation’s general secretary Paul Nowak said: “This Bill will deliver better pay, security and respect for millions of workers up and down the country… This is about creating a modern economy that works for workers and business alike – and stopping decent employers being undercut by the bad.”
Unison (a public sector union) general secretary Christina McAnea said: “This comprehensive package of measures is what working people and decent employers have been waiting for.”
This at a time when it is being reported that Labour is being lobbied hard by big business and their representatives, including in Starmer’s parliamentary Labour Party, to water down the very limited commitments given during the general election last year. That package of so-called improvements to workers’ rights was originally called ‘The New Deal for Workers’ but had morphed into ‘Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay’ by the time of the election.
This was a far more accurate definition of Starmer’s plans. But in any period, and particularly at this crisis-ridden time, workers and bosses will have very different ideas about how work can be made to pay, or actually ‘who’ will pay for it?
As we predicted, Starmer is clear that it is workers who will pay the price, as the economy stagnates, the cost of living squeeze endures and he tightens government budgets.
While there are some reforms granted in the Bill, which are of course welcome, the devil is very much in the detail. And a big thrust of it is to allow major sources of the exploitation of workers to continue.
There are some restrictions to zero-hour contracts but there are enough loopholes that bosses will exploit to continue the blight of precarious employment.
And also, there is no mention in the update of the banning of ‘fire and rehire’, which had already been given exemptions for companies in ‘exceptional’ circumstances, which they already claim in terms of falling profits or budget cuts. It is poignant that on the very day that this apparent omission became public, Devon County Council threatened 1,000 of its workers with fire and rehire. Also at the same time, bin workers in Unite the Union in Birmingham are on all-out strike against the brutal Labour council, who are hiding behind the commissioners sent in by the previous Conservative government (the Tories) after the council declared bankruptcy, and remain under Starmer’s Labour government.
The Bill does appear to confirm the repeal of former Tory prime minister Rishi Sunak’s minimum service levels (MSL) anti-union legislation. In reality, this was rendered inoperable by the actions of workers in train drivers’ union Aslef on London-North Eastern Railway at the beginning of last year, when they called five days of strikes in response to the only threatened use of the MSL.
The MSL should nevertheless have been repealed on day one of Starmer’s government, with a 160-plus seat majority, as should also have been the case with former Tory prime minister David Cameron’s Trade Union Act 2016, with its undemocratic voting thresholds.
But Starmer consciously refused to do this, instead deliberately delaying legislation so that this year’s strike ballots, particularly those in the public sector on a national scale, would have to adhere to the existing 50% thresholds. Jonathan Reynolds’s statement indicates that Labour is tying together electronic balloting with the removal of the thresholds through a process that will include the launch of “a working group with trade unions and businesses”. This poses the clear danger of diluting the measure and the clear plan to further delaying its implementation.
Reynolds has already watered down the repeal of the notice given by unions to employers for industrial action, which was doubled by David Cameron to 14 days from the 7 brought in by Thatcher. Instead it will be now 10 days.
The trade unions must demand that all the Tory anti-union laws – from the Thatcher and Major to the Cameron, Johnson and Sunak governments – must be repealed with immediate scrapping of the MSL and the Trade Union Act. The parliamentary means exist to take those steps immediately.
There are a whole series of existing amendments to the bill, including to restore prison officers’ right to strike, tabled by John McDonnell, a left MP suspended from Labour. The trade unions should be instructing the MPs who form their parliamentary groups that they are expected to vote for this and any amendment to strengthen the bill, as well as seeking the support of the independent group of MPs headed by Jeremy Corbyn, the former left-leader of Labour, now expelled from the party, and others including the three suspended Labour MPs
But Starmer is increasingly showing, both at home with his austerity plans and also abroad as he fawns over Trump and looks to increase military spending at the expense of welfare for the poorest, that his primary role is to represent the class interests of the capitalists.
Therefore, the unions must reject any attempt at rotten partnership with this Labour government and the bosses, who want to go on the offensive against workers. It is necessary to face up to this reality, and prepare for industrial struggle.
The strike wave of the last few years have shown that workers are prepared to fight. And that concerted action, the biggest for three decades, was a factor that Starmer and finance minister Reeves had to take into account when gaining office. But after the pay offers of last summer, nowhere near enough to recoup what have been lost over the last decades, only half that is now on offer accompanied by major cuts.
This also poses the need for the unions to supplement militant industrial action by also building a real fighting political vehicle for workers as an alternative to pro-business New Labour. One that consolidates what is won in workers’ struggle and counterposes socialist ownership and planning to capitalist crisis.
