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UNION activists and supporters gathered in central London on Saturday calling for major improvements to the government’s Employment Rights Bill currently passing through Parliament, writes Adrian Weir.
Union leaders, rank-and-file activists, leading labour lawyers, progressive academics and MPs lined up at the Campaign for Trade Union Freedom rally to point out the Bill’s shortcomings.
Many argue that the present Bill is far from what Labour originally promised in its New Deal for Working People, adopted at party conference.
Garfield Hylton, a GMB activist from Amazon’s Coventry depot, explained how Amazon’s union-busting techniques when faced with a recognition claim will not be outlawed under the Bill.
Tabusam Ahmed, a Unite officer from London, spoke against outsourcing which, despite Labour’s promise to bring about a wave of insourcing, is hardly mentioned.
Eddie Dempsey, transport union RMT general secretary, and Martyn Gray, director of organising at maritime union Nautilus, both spoke about how P&O Ferries had fired 800 seafarers and replaced them with labour recruited by an overseas agency.
Mr Dempsey argued that under the terms of the Bill another P&O Ferries could happen tomorrow.
A group of migrant domestic workers at the rally said they were permanently tied to even abusive employers through their visa under a law introduced by the Tories, arguing the Bill should have recognised their plight.
Lord John Hendy KC described the implausibility of a worker on a zero-hours contract being able to insist on being given a guaranteed hours contract and keeping their job.
Other key deficiencies in the Bill, such as no real sectoral collective bargaining and no repeal of the 1980s restrictions on the right to strike, were comprehensively dealt with by Lori Holmes from PCS union, Professor Keith Ewing and John McDonnell MP.
Activists have been urged to lobby Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds to accept forthcoming amendments made to the Bill in the House of Lords, before campaigning for a further Bill, dubbed Employment Rights #2. Do so here.
