7 Articles by:
John Hendy is a Labour peer and labour lawyer. He is the chair of the Institute for Employment Rights (IER).
Thatcher’s anti-union laws have brought misery to workers by restricting their ability to fight. If Labour’s Employment Rights Bill fails to scrap them and empower working people, its efforts to change the workplace will be in vain.
Labour’s commitment to reverse the decline of unions is the only way for Britain to end job insecurity and in-work poverty — if this was ditched, it would only show that Starmer is comfortable with bosses reliant on massive exploitation to turn a profit.
Labour has quietly dropped key policies to guarantee basic rights and protections at work and strengthen trade unions – a U-turn that would harm millions of the country’s most exploited workers.
The anti-strike law going before Parliament today will give bosses the power to sack frontline staff and drive their unions into bankruptcy. Its aim is clear: stop workers fighting back.
The fact P&O won’t face criminal proceedings over its mass sacking of 800 workers is a reminder of the impunity enjoyed by rogue bosses in the British economy – and of the urgent need to overhaul our labour laws.
The present legal system lets bosses shirk responsibilities to staff by downgrading their status. A new bill fights that injustice by creating a single ‘worker’ category – with proper rights for all.
The Covid-19 pandemic has shown how crucial workers are to the economy, but also how weak their protections are at work – only one policy can level the playing field: sectoral collective bargaining.