At last year’s TUC conference, the employment rights minister, Justin Madders, described Labour’s workers’ rights package as “the sort of thing that would make you say to the person on the street: ‘It does matter who you vote for.’” Despite the bill’s initial offering having been diluted, he is right: day one employment rights, an end to “exploitative” zero-hours contracts and a clampdown on fire-and-rehire.
In the midst of abysmal polling, you would think Labour, desperate to prove that after more than a decade of Tory dysfunction the government can improve people’s daily lives, would loudly embrace its overhaul of worker protections. But that is not what has happened. Instead, even as the government has launched a frenzied publicity offensive over its “tough” immigration stance, it has remained comparably silent over its employment reforms, seeming to shy away from letting news of the bill even reach the person on the street.
What is going on? The answer is simple: fevered controversy surrounding Labour’s modest employment reform has the government running scared. Spearheading the alarmism is the business lobby – in a reprisal of its hysteria prior to the introduction of the minimum wage – which is prophesying job losses and company closures as a result of reform. The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has been open about “lobbying hard” against the bill. The group’s chair, Rupert Soames, has accused Labour of treating business like a “cash cow”, and insisted that the combination of the new reforms with a raise in the national minimum wage and employers’ national insurance contributions will prompt an “ugly rush” of sackings.
Parts of the media have been more than happy to amplify these scare stories. A Financial Times editorial titled “Labour needs to compromise on employment rights” claimed that, if the party is to “foster the economic dynamism the UK needs”, it will need to go “much further in adjusting the legislation to meet business concerns.”.
Reform UK has voted against the employment rights bill at every stage, with Nigel Farage using his GB News slot to allege that protecting workers from third-party harassment spelled the end for pub banter.
The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, has also taken aim at the legislation, accusing Keir Starmer of proposing not an employment bill but an “unemployment bill” that would leave the public with “higher prices, fewer jobs and less growth”.
That the attacks on the bill, and on Labour’s links with the unions, are so predictable is what makes the government’s vulnerability to them so disappointing. Trade unions – who have fought line by line over the reforms with Labour for years – know full well that the government’s reticence to champion the bill puts it at greater risk of being further derailed.
Not one to flinch from a challenge, Mick Lynch, when asked about the CBI’s defence of fire-and-rehire, told the employment rights committee there is no doubt that the Factories Act – a Victorian law restricting children labour – was “a bit burdensome for the mill owners and mining companies of this country”.
With the bill under siege, robust ripostes like these are needed to protect it. Before it had even reached parliament, key provisions had been walked back. Gone are universal plans for “fair pay agreements”, which would have imposed sectoral collective bargaining across the economy, but will now only be used in the adult social care sector. Also scrapped is the pledge to pay in full the wages of workers on zero-hours contracts who have their shifts cancelled “without appropriate notice”, replaced instead by “compensation that is proportionate”.
And with Labour having left much of the hard work of fleshing out the bill to future secondary legislation and consultations, there is growing anxiety among unions over the potential for even further backsliding. Take the question of employment status. With entitlement to many of the new rights unveiled by Labour hinging on the question of worker classification, clarification on the boundary between employment and self-employment is urgently needed to ensure the maximum number of workers benefit.
Yet despite an initial commitment to move “towards a single status of worker and transition towards a simpler two-part framework for employment status”, this policy will instead be subject to a “full and detailed consultation”. After years of debate and two backbench bills on the subject, it is hard to know what could be left to consult on. “You can probably consult till the cows come home,” said Margaret Beels, the government’s independent director of labour market enforcement. “It’s about time to do something about it.”
With the employment bill expected to make its way back to the Commons soon, unions are working hard to ensure that the promises Labour made them in opposition are the policies it delivers while in government. Last week, the 11 general secretaries of trade unions affiliated to Labour, including Unite and GMB, called on the government in an open letter to “stand firm on workers’ rights” and “face down the naysayers”.
With Labour so fixated on establishing its economic credibility in the eyes of the corporate world, it has fallen to the TUC to make the point that the new workers’ rights bill supports, and not hinders, the government’s growth strategy. Rather than cede to Reform on immigration, Labour is being pushed by the TUC to use its expansion in workers’ rights as ammunition in the fight against the party, publishing a poll showing the popularity of the bill among Reform voters.
Taking the results of this poll to the streets, the TUC asked Clacton residents who they thought had opposed the employment rights bill. They shot back with “businesspeople, obviously”, “the employer” and “company owners”. When told that it was in fact their MP, Nigel Farage, they reacted with genuine shock. “Nigel? No!” replied one woman. “I am really surprised. Because I thought he was working for the public.”
Labour should take this as proof that failing to talk about workers’ rights is not only morally weak, but a strategic miscalculation. Remaining silent on a policy that makes workers’ lives more stable and dignified leaves space for Reform to step in and present itself as the party providing solutions for working people. If Labour caves in further to corporate scaremongering, it will be more than just its relationship with the unions that is at stake.
Polly Smythe is labour movement correspondent at Novara Media
