Sharon Graham, the general secretary of the Unite union, has accused Labour of partly rowing back on its plans to bolster workers’ rights in order to “curry favour with big business”, while the party said there had been no watering down of its policies.
Leaked documents, first obtained by the Financial Times, show the party changed the wording of its plans to strengthen workers’ rights at its national policy forum in July in an apparent attempt to head off Tory criticisms of its approach to business.
Angela Rayner, the party’s deputy leader, whose portfolio covers workers’ rights, said on Friday morning that Labour still intended to ban zero-hours contracts, tackle bogus self-employment and end qualifying periods for rights in the “biggest levelling up of workers’ rights in decades”.
“Far from watering it down, we will now set out in detail how we will implement it and tackle the Tories’ scaremongering,” she added.
However, the leaked text of Labour’s policy from July suggests there may be more flexibility in its approach than before. The party had been planning to create a single “worker” status for all but the genuinely self-employed, ensuring the same rights for everyone regardless of sector, wage or type of contract.
The forum agreed last month to consult on this policy after entering government to create “a simpler framework” that differentiates between workers and the genuinely self-employed in a way that would “properly capture the breadth of employment relationships in the UK” as well as ensuring workers can still “benefit from flexible working where they choose to do so”.
Labour also tweaked its plan for “day one” workers’ rights such as sick pay, parental leave and unfair dismissal to say that this would not prevent “probationary periods with fair and transparent rules and processes”.
Labour’s trade union backers, from Unison to the GMB, were in favour of the national policy forum result when it met in July, apart from Unite, which withheld its support. At the time, the GMB said Labour had a policy programme “that would make a real difference for workers and industries they work in”.
However, Graham said the leaked text of the policy on workers’ rights showed her union had been right not to back it.
She said: “What is evident is that there has been a clear rowing back on the new deal for working people document.
“The changes made at the national policy forum (NPF) materially watered down workers’ rights and so could not be supported by Unite. Today, we now know the actual text of the NPF document … Unite was, and is, absolutely justified in taking this position.
“Labour needs to make the right choices for workers now, not water them down to curry favour with big business. They need to stop wavering and make a clear signal that they are truly the voice for working people.”
The national policy forum is a process that examines possible policies and drafts wording from which Labour forms its next manifesto.
On Friday morning, the shadow education minister Stephen Morgan said he could not comment on the policy process before the party’s manifesto but made clear it would be “pro-worker and pro-business”.
“We have got a really good relationship with business now; we can be trusted to run our economy and to run our country, and we have got a set of policies which are pro-worker too,” he said.
Rayner tweeted the party’s policy paper on day-one workers’ rights, saying it would be “the biggest levelling up of workers’ rights in decades, providing security, treating workers fairly, and paying a decent wage”.
She said the party would “tackle insecure work by banning zero-hours contracts, ending fire and rehire and ending qualifying periods for basic rights, which currently leave working people waiting up to two years for basic protections”.
Rayner added: “We’ll make work more family friendly by making flexible working a day-one right except where it isn’t reasonably feasible, strengthening protections for pregnant women and by urgently reviewing parental leave.
“And we’ll make sure work actually pays with a genuine living wage that covers the cost of living, ensuring fair tips, boosting collective rights – and by speeding up the closing of the gender pay gap.”
Some on the left of the party are still suspicious that the national policy forum process has diluted Rayner’s policy paper before the manifesto.
A spokesperson for the grassroots group Momentum said: “Under the Tories, Britain is run for its bosses, not its workers. Corporate profits are soaring while working people are underpaid and undervalued. That’s why it’s crucial Labour’s new deal for working people is implemented in full.”
