4 Articles by:
Keith Ewing is the president of the Institute of Employment Rights (IER). He a professor of public law at King's College London and the author of numerous books, including The Bonfire of the Liberties and MI5, the Cold War and the Rule of Law.
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 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 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.