Mark Best, Socialist Party National Committee
Labour’s Employment Rights Bill has been presented to Parliament. The content of the law is not yet final – it will face amendments in the House of Lords and the Commons before reaching the statute books.
When Starmer tells big-business bosses, who are creaming billions of pounds of profit off the backs of workers struggling to make ends meet, that they have “nothing to worry about” in the new laws, it will prompt many to think twice about whether or not they are all they’re cracked up to be.
The contents are not exactly the same as in ‘Labour’s New Deal for Workers’ policy document. It has already been subject to big business ‘consultation’ and lots of it faces more too.
What are some of the main points in the bill?
Anti-union laws
Most of the Tory anti-union laws remain, but on its way out is the undemocratic 50% voter turnout threshold for strike action from David Cameron’s 2016 Trade Union Act.
Brought in to try and stymie public sector unions fighting back nationally, this, combined with a lack of a fighting lead at top of the unions, meant there was little national industrial action until the cost-of-living crisis exploded into the strike wave. E-ballots for strike action will also be allowed.
This could make it easier for unions to organise strike action against Labour cuts or big-business bosses’ attacks on workers’ living standards. But only if trade union leaderships take advantage of increased rights to strike, and then organise strong and serious action to win for workers.
The Tories’ anti-union Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act will be scrapped. Other pieces of Tory anti-union legislation going back to Thatcher remain on the statute books, including the ban on prison officers taking strike action.
We demand all the anti-union laws are abolished.
Fire and rehire
Firing and rehiring workers on worse pay and conditions – scandalously used by Tower Hamlets Labour council after the pandemic, British Gas, P&O ferries, and others – was set to be banned by Labour’s New Deal. However, as it stands, companies would be able to use it if there’s ‘no financial alternative’.
But who decides this? It should be the workers themselves by opening the books to democratic trade union inspections. When bosses spend years paying themselves dividends, refusing to invest in a company and strip it of its assets, why should workers pay for bosses’ failures?
Instead of posing it as a company going bust or workers taking the hit, companies should be taken out of the hands of the capitalist vultures, nationalised and put under democratic workers’ control and management.
Rights from day one
The pledge for full employment rights from day one has been scrapped. Plans are to encode into law probation periods of between six and twelve months, depending on if the bosses get their way, in which workers can be sacked if bosses think it isn’t working out.
This, like many aspects of the package, including the setting up of new regulators and negotiating bodies, will be dependent on wrangling over secondary legislation.
Zero-hour contracts
The promise to ban zero-hour contracts has also been muddied. “Exploitative” zero-hour contracts will be banned, and workers will have the right to a contract that reflects their hours over a set period.
But who will decide what is exploitative or not? And how will workers stand up to the pressure of management to accept bad contracts if they’re threatened with the sack? Only with well-organised unions prepared to take action can workers have genuine flexibility on their terms and not the bosses.
The wranglings mean many reforms won’t come into effect until 2026. We can expect the next two years to be full of attempts by big business to pressure the Starmer government into watering the reforms down further.
The trade unions can exert counter-pressure. And MPs, such as the Independent Alliance MPs which include Jeremy Corbyn or the suspended seven Labour MPs, can move amendments to strengthen the bill too.
The trade unions need to fight tooth and nail in the interests of workers on every issue: to strengthen workers’ legal rights, to strengthen workers’ organised strength in the workplaces, and to fight for a socialist political alternative that fights for workers’ interests against those of the bosses.
