The UK’s second largest union, Unite, has issued a fresh warning to the Labour party not to dilute its proposed New Deal for Workers.
According to newspaper reports on 1 May, Labour is responding to lobbying from business groups to adjust some of its more definitive policies in this area – many of which are most strongly associated with deputy leader Angela Rayner, who has pledged not to alter the policies.
Sharon Graham, general secretary of Unite, said: “Choosing May Day to give notice of watering down your promise to overhaul one of the worst sets of employment rights in Europe is beyond irony. If Labour do not explicitly recommit to what they have already pledged, namely that the New Deal for Workers will be delivered in full within the first 100 days of office, then a red line will be crossed.
“Labour’s vow to delivering a straightforward right of access for trade unions, and a much-simplified route to recognition and therefore the right to negotiate, is the litmus test for Unite. It’s a political non-negotiable”.
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A spokesman for the GMB union, the UK’s third largest union said that working people were “desperate for change” and it expected the pledges to be honoured.
“Labour’s New Deal for Working People was agreed at the party’s national policy forum last summer,” the spokesman said. “Keir Starmer is clear about the importance of this agreement and GMB looks forward to it being honoured.”
Much of the suspicion from unions centres on Labour’s commitment to ban zero hours working – a form of employment for about 1.1 million people in the UK. The New Deal stated: “Labour will ban zero hours contracts and contracts without a minimum number of guaranteed hours. We will also ensure anyone working regular hours for twelve weeks or more will gain a right to a regular contract to reflect those hours normally worked.”
But, according to media commentary, the new position is that Labour will not place an outright ban on all zero-hour contracts. Instead, the policy will recognise that some people appreciate the flexibility of such contracts. However, a duty will be placed on employers to provide contracts based on the hours people have worked for the preceding 12 weeks.
Formalise working patterns
Employment law specialist Darren Newman interprets this as meaning “there will be some sort of law that will require employers to formalise working patterns that have been observed in practice so that the workers have some assurance that those hours will be continued in the future”.
He said that this may have an undesirable consequence: “I don’t quite see how a law like that would work without simply encouraging employers to keep working patterns as irregular and unpredictable as possible – but these are details that will have to be worked out when Labour is in government.”
Matt Fryer, managing director of contractor firm Brookson Group, felt that the policy was misguided from the beginning: “The unintended consequences of a blanket ban on zero hours contracts, intended to protect lower paid workers from exploitation, is a negative impact on the flexibility of other aspects of the workforce – namely the majority of freelancers, agency temps and contractors.
Fryer favoured further clarification of Labour’s plans: “What is needed is a clear line between flexible workers in an employment situation – protecting their rights, while offering some degree of certainty over hours – and skilled or experienced contractors who chose to work flexibly as self-employed.
“Dispensing with multiple workers statuses would simplify things from an employment rights perspective but doesn’t solve complications of assessing status for tax purposes, so that would still need to be clarified. The trick will be where to draw the line.”
Hina Belitz, employment partner at Excello Law, pointed to other areas where Labour may be set to “water down” pledges. For example, plans to give workers a “right to switch-off” would not be enshrined in law but instead will be in a new code of practice for employers, with the smallest companies exempted.
‘Disappointing’
Belitz said it was “disappointing that the right to disconnect is planned to only be incorporated into an Acas code of practice rather than enshrined in legislation as was previously intended. Other countries have successfully implemented a right to disconnect through legislative measures and it is unclear how much a new code of practice will do to change a culture of employees feeling pressured to be available 24/7.”
A Labour spokesman insisted that the New Deal was still “a core part of Labour’s offer” to the country. “We will be campaigning on this ahead of the general election,” the spokesman said. “Our commitments to bring forward legislation to parliament within 100 days to deliver the New Deal and to consult widely on implementation have not changed.”
The party has signalled to the press that its revised plans would simply reflect decisions made at the national policy forum. This is likely to include further consultation on its plan to create a “single status” for all workers except those who are genuinely self-employed and plans for a review of parental leave within the first year of a Labour administration.
TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said he was confident Labour would still deliver on its pledges: “The UK’s long experiment with a low-rights, low-wage economy has been terrible for growth, productivity and living standards. That’s why we urgently need the New Deal for Working People. We expect Labour to deliver it with an employment bill in the first 100 days.
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He added: “Keir Starmer re-affirmed his commitment to delivering the New Deal, in full, just this week to hundreds of shop workers at Usdaw’s national conference.”
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