LABOUR is due to unveil its long-awaited New Deal for Workers employment rights package on Thursday.
For the trade union movement, this is Labour’s flagship policy. Abolition of Tory anti-union laws will unshackle the power of workers to take industrial action; day-one rights will reduce the incentive for unscrupulous bosses to keep people on temporary or insecure contracts; a fair pay agreement for social care could end the endemic outsourcing and race to the bottom on standards that blight the sector.
Some unions rightly stress that this is just the first step. Much more needs to be done.
The attempt to ban effective strike action through minimum service levels has already been broken by the trade union movement. We must see too the end to arbitrary ballot thresholds imposed by the Tories in 2016, but we should go further, demanding the repeal of all anti-union laws since Thatcher.
Sweden’s IF Metall mechanics, in their heroic battle against Tesla boss Elon Musk, benefit from the solidarity action of dockers refusing to unload Tesla vehicles, posties refusing to deliver Tesla’s mail. Our unions need the right to take secondary action too.
Sectoral agreements for social care must be a blueprint for sectoral collective bargaining across the economy. The CWU’s TUC resolution on a collective bargaining summit within six months, with a plan to roll out collective bargaining nationally ready for next autumn, sets the pace.
All eyes will be on the detail tomorrow and if important pledges are missing from the legislation, Labour must be confronted immediately on when and how they are going to be brought forward.
This is legislation born in and developed by the trade union movement, won as TUC and then Labour policy. That itself is a model which needs to be rolled out in other fields: what is the labour movement vision for local government, for the NHS, for our schools, and how do we turn it into reality? These should be priority questions for us all.
