It is, of course, May Day. Or Workers Day. And so, the FT reports this morning that:
Sir Keir Starmer's Labour party is set to unveil a weakened package of workers' rights in the coming weeks in its latest softening of radical policies ahead of the upcoming general election, the Financial Times has learnt.
They added:
The package, first outlined in 2021, has been billed by Starmer as the biggest increase in workers' rights for decades, with the Labour leader warning business chiefs in February it would “not please everyone in the room”.
But behind the scenes shadow ministers have been discussing how to tone down some of the pledges to ease employer misgivings as the party tries to boost its pro-business credentials.
So, there goes another one of the very few identifiably left of centre policies Labour was promoting, and all to appease the business community.
Labour Party? Pull the other one....
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Apologies if this seems like a niggle. Framing.
“workers’ rights in the coming weeks in its latest softening of radical policies”
There is nothing radical about “workers rights”, they should be part of any society in which fairness, justice and freedom are foundational tennets (& not just words). Neither are they “left wing”. Companies will always be a mixed bag wrt their attitudes to the people they employ. Government is there to make sure that such people are treated in a fair and just way. Framing workers rights as “radical” is positioning the writer as, if not against them, certainly on the side of the companies.
Ditto “left wing”. There is nothing left wing about “workers rights”, as a cursuory consideration of John Rawls thought experiment will show (e.g. how would you want to be treated as a worker for Amazon?).
LINO no longer represents “workers”, this representation evaporated in the 1980s, LINO has been captured by neo-liberals and as it has said repeatedly, is very happy to do business with companies and further their interests. The softening/elimination of (non) radical worker policies is thus to be expected.
Accepted
Very obvious that workers’ rights are nowhere near adequate:-
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/may/01/dividends-payments-soar-globally-as-worker-pay-stagnates
Don’t hear the Thatcherite Starmer talking about narrowing this gap do we!
Agreed
Left wing politics only exists if it is represented in a legislative body. It isn’t today. Or if it does, then not in a meaningful way that is effective.
We only have talk of left wing politics.
The same is true with workers rights. There are protections against exploitation but it is almost impossible to prove in a court of law that it was intentionally caused by a business. Current EU law isn’t adequate.
The biggest problem with current laws on workers’ rights is enforcement. Apart from the minimum wage, which HMRC may try to enforce if someone complains to them (which they can do and remain anonymous) all other rights have to be enforced by the worker.
Not enough workers are members of trade unions, which are, unfortunately, loath to enforce the law for an individual, preferring collective bargaining and collective action to the courts.
It is a criminal offence for anyone who is not a solicitor to charge a worker for helping them enforce their rights unless they are registered with the FCA, which can cost £10,000 per year. Specialist employment law advisers are unlikely to do this because so few workers can afford to pay fees.
Home insurance legal asistance policies may help, but are usually very risk averse and will only pursue a case that is very likely to win and, even then, prefer to settle with a NDA. So no precedent is created.
Legal Aid was withdrawn years ago.
So the worker is on their own in a very uneven battle against solicitors and barristers.
When Industrial Tribunals were first set up the stated intention was for them to be ‘people’s courts’ with employers and employees representing themselves. I was told some time ago by a barrister that there is more complex law argued in the employment tribunal than in the criminal court. Having experienced both I have to agree.
Yes more workers rights are needed, but without a means of enforcement it is pretty pointless.
You are so right…
The withdrawal of legal aid and the charging of fees was a deliberate killer blow
I have just read this in the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/may/01/labours-new-deal-for-workers-will-not-fully-ban-zero-hours-contracts
“The law will set out the minimum standards that are expected and that will be enforced in the way all employment law is enforced.” Right. So fundamnetally not, then.
Quite so
Cyndy – Agree with your comment, but want to remind folks that minimum wage is another con.
It is calculated based on the median wage – which itself will only be encouraged to keep getting lower given companies have been told that this is all you have to pay people to be a decent employer.
Organisations like ‘The Living Wage Foundation’ then appear where they calculate a value based on expected core spend including rent and food, but when you look in to how they calculate rent it is only based on the cost of social housing! What about the million or more households on the waiting list for social housing? How do they pay their rent on minimum wage, even at the 50p more an hour this foundation suggests? A 50p which I think would take a full time worker over the initial income tax threshold anyway. Just so Sainsburys or whoever can boast they are treating workers well. Clearly no of these companies has actually looked in to it, or observed their own employees.
And what about part-time workers? Or those forced to be ‘self-employed’ to get round all of this..?
These are rhetorical questions, I just wish people understood the true con in the implementation of the Tory minimum wage – that it exists primarily to assuage middle class guilt/con those not on the breadline in to thinking that those struggling must be lazy or bad people ‘because everyone gets minimum living wage’. If they are still struggling, then it is their fault. And it also abuses workers for whom it is not a living wage – because that means it ‘must be them’, ‘they must be doing something wrong’. Awful, awful system.
The weakness , the willingness to throw any policy out of the way, the general thinking that bigger neo liberal sticking plasters will fix 40 years of free market dogma and neglect its more than tragic ! what is needed is a total break with the past on a whole range of policies . So depressing !
Patrick – Jeremy Corbyn’s success in the 2017 GE supports what you say. When he was elected Labour’s leader, loads of people joined the party and in 2017 Labour trashed the working majority in the HoC that Cameron had handed on to May, leaving her dependent on the 10 DUP MPs. Even in 2019, the Tory 80-seat majority was based on just about 44% of votes cast (or just under 30% of the total electorate) – not exactly an overwhelming mandate. There are, I’m sure, votes to be had in a more openly ‘socialist’ programme. So what’s going on? (And, btw, why does no-one – even in Labour – talk about the 2017 GE any more? Corbyn and Corbynism really has been expunged by the current crop.)
Don’t forget the thirteen labour/conservative seats Ruth Davidson won for Theresa May.
No wonder she ‘won’ herself a seat in the Lords.
As has (no doubt) been said often: if there are Scots to roast there will always be a another Scot to turn the spit.
I find it very difficult to write about contemporary so-called British political issues anymore; save the nature of money. It is bad enough in Scotland, but however desperate here, there is something to work on, however weak it may be. Britain is a lost cause. It is transparently obvious that the toxic triumph of the two-party system has finally reduced democracy to a single ‘de facto’ government with different faces, but effectively the same essential policies; dissent is reduced to a simple identity distinction; friends or enemies (of the State). This is electoral dictatorship with a very British twist; newspeak in which nothing is what it means or what it claims to be. We live in a world of lies.
The only insight into the reality that you will find is the evidence provided in the Post Office Horizon Inquiry. Ou country floats on a sea of lies. You cannot trust anything “official” about anything. Least of all you cannot trust Parliament. It will betray you, whomsoever you are. Ask the Waspi women, the Postmasters/mistresses, the victims of the blood scandal, those with an English leasehold, those with a property cladding problem, the disabled, the homeless, those in damp public housing, anyone paying for water, for energy. Need I go on. It is endless. It is all endlessly corrupt. I have not even yet mentioned the lies of Brexit. It is destroying us. This is all a perfectly fair description of a deeply, endemically corrupt state, presided over by a corrupted Parliamentary system. Stop listening to the insidious, soft tones of reasonable, compassionate concern by politicians. It is sound-bite sophistry. They will let you down. They are lying.
There is nothing more to say.
I agree, only a matter of time before the lights go out here. Did you see this about Scotland and the Freeports? I found it very alarming, more evidence of organised looting by govt cronies, to my eyes. https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2023/08/03/the-freeport-ruse-exposed/
Your description, together with the very similar two party system in the States which is delivering genocide on a plate, makes me see references to Orban or Putin as traps to discourage us from naming the extreme corruption in our own system. We are in no place to start ‘regime’ change abroad when we are so in need of it right here.
LINO, the grift that keeps on giving.
Or maybe LINO the grift that keeps the few on life support!
What really pisses me off is this: I understand the need to avoid policy statements that would terrify the establishment enough to mobilise big guns against Labour, but surely the right strategy should be to minimise the extent of that? Don’t unnecessarily restrict future options. Instead, at every turn Starmer seems to go much further, thereby making a rod for his own back and limiting his scope for manoeuvre once he gets elected. Has Labour forgotten that there will be a time after the election when it will actually have to govern?
An alternative strategy is to actually promote your priorities but be sufficiently well prepared that you can argue the case for what you believe in, against whatever status quo you deem inadequate, and present want you to do if elected positively.
The alternative is stasis.
Don’t be silly, Tony. That would require some degree of integrity. You’re thinking of the past: They did things differently in those days.
Maybe we will again, but I’m not banking on it.
As PR ‘guru’ Matthew Freud said – Starmer is just empowering the school bullies – Tories, Mail,Telegraph, Sun, big business, City etc – . Freud recommends just doing what you have decided is right and will work – and ‘ignore them’.
Fat chance.
That’s my labour party membership in the bin, hung on for as long as I could but when my faith is based on starmer lying through his teeth to get into power and then doing the right thing it’s deluded. Lenin would probably recommend voting tory as the best way to provoke a revolution.
Ditto Matt Cownie… I’m just out of the Labour Party just as you describe…and I know dozens young n old who will be voting Green not Labour (and they all voted labour in 2019). The redrawn constituency of Waveney valley is likely to return a green mp…