by Richard Wild, branch co-chair and NEC member
I was privileged to be elected as a UCU delegate to TUC Congress in Brighton and wanted to opportunity to feedback on some of the interesting debates had there. One concerned the new Employment Rights bill currently before the House of Lords. Bridget Phillipson MP addressed congress and repeatedly said it would be implemented in full. I remain concerned that already the bill as proposed is no longer the complete reversal of the draconian anti-trade union legislation under the Conservatives. This post from Ben Sellers captures my concerns and directs to The Institute of Employment Rights website for more policy detail. However, Ben also forensically dissects the political shenanigans that, in his words are “pulling down the Parliamentary scaffolding around it”:
I spent a bit of time watching the TUC Congress livestream this week & I heard a few delegates pressing the government not to water down the Employment Rights Bill, demanding that the legislation be passed in full, no retreat from the ‘full fat’ package we were promised, reverse the Lords amendments etc etc.I understand why people say these things, but as good as they might sound, it’s not at all reflective of reality and concedes ground from the start.
Because the truth is, the Employment Rights Bill has already been been watered down, well before the recent amendments, and Labour’s employment rights policies & the framework intended to sustain them has been weakened ever since Starmer became Labour leader and rapidly since Andy McDonald resigned in September 2021.
If you want to know the detail of the slippages & climb downs (and certainly, if you’re an active trade unionist, you should), visit The Institute of Employment Rights website, and read the blogs & briefings because labour law experts like John Hendy & Keith Ewing have charted this forensically (in the true meaning of the word).
I’m not an expert, but I will try to give you some examples in lay-persons terms.Part one: There are a number of things missing from the Bill. These are not small details, they are fundamental pieces of the jigsaw, without which it doesn’t work as a comprehensive piece of transformative legislation.1. As I mentioned the other day, the whole issue of a single status for all workers has been kicked into the long grass. It’s said to be the subject of a review, but no one knows how that will work or when it will happen. This omission means that millions of precarious workers, bogus self-employed, contractors, people mainly in the gig economy, will not be covered by the legislation, because they will not be classed as workers. This is a disaster.2. The other big one is the omission of sectoral collective bargaining. This was central to the whole package of measures in the Employment Rights Bill. While it’s not a panacea, without it, workers – even organised workers – have had their bargaining power significantly reduced over the last four decades. While a the introduction of sectoral collective bargaining was always envisaged as a staged process, the Government has turned this on its head: only planning to introduce it as a pilot in the social care sector, with a review to follow (timescale unknown). That might then be the end of it, we don’t know. What we do know is that the roll-out plan no longer exists.3. The next watering down is something that has been picked up by several unions, thankfully. Loopholes have been introduced in two crucial areas – Zero Hours Contracts and Fire & Rehire. Although there is a lot of guff about two sided flexibility, the truth is they have been introduced at the behest of employers who want to be able to continue to use these practices to reduce the pay & conditions of workers & make them more vulnerable. Remember, the legislation that was drafted in 2018-2019, with Laura Pidcock overseeing, was watertight – designed not to have loopholes, in the full knowledge that employers would exploit them. Politicians are always very careful with their language – Labour’s leadership have been talking about ‘exploitative’ contracts & employers for some time. That caveat should have rung alarm bells.4. Even on ‘day one rights’, there has been a climbdown, based on a muddying of the water. Employers are insisting on exceptions for employees in probation periods & the government have yielded – again. Overall, on individual rights, the enforcement regime is weak, and unlikely to deter exploitation. Again, this is a consequence of a steady watering down, not an accident.5. Another key area where the government hasn’t followed through on the 2017 – 2019 plans is on strike action. Considering their point blank refusal to support strikes in opposition & their cautious response to even the outrageous Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act, that’s maybe not surprising, but they are only committing to the most piecemeal reversal of anti-strike legislation in this Bill. Apart from a few details, nearly all of the anti-trade union legislation 1980-2016 is still in place. In particular, the government have no intention of re-introducing the right to secondary action, which means that unions have one arm tied behind their backs – and makes collective, solidarity action illegal, in essence.
In solidarity,
Richard