Peter Mandelson’s article in this morning’s Sunday Times has provoked an immediate backlash. Mandelson, a talentless henchman from the New Labour years, who once said, under the previous leadership, that he worked every day to undermine Jeremy Corbyn, took to the Murdoch press to subvert a unanimously agreed Labour policy.
In an article entitled “Labour’s union reforms must not be rushed. They can’t betray business”, the unelected Baron Mandelson began by praising Rachel Reeves’ March 19th Mais lecture, analysed on Labour Hub last week. But he then made the questionable assertion that Reeves, in moving the legal pendulum on trade union laws back to the centre, said she would not go further than the settlement bequeathed by New Labour. “Employers need to be satisfied before the election that this will be honoured in both the spirit and detail of the proposed law,” Mandelson insisted.
Backbench Labour MP Ian Lavery was quick to slam the “prince of darkness” for “attacking the unions and hard-working people”. Andrew Fisher, Labour’s Former Executive Director of Policy and Research under Jeremy Corbyn, tweeted “The counter-offensive continues against Labour’s New Deal for Working People (an actually decent set of policies). Maybe Mandelson should list his corporate sponsors for transparency?”
TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak tweeted: “Wages no higher in real terms than they were in 2008. Insecure, low paid work hard wired into the economy. Household debt spiralling. Good employers undercut by zero hours cowboys. Spare me the ‘unintended consequences’ of decent employment laws brigade and their outriders.”
Former TUC leader Frances O’Grady agreed, tweeting: “A shocking 1.1m people on zero hours, 3.7m jobs paid below the real Living Wage and the UK has one of the worst income inequality rates in the OECD. Meanwhile productivity, investment and growth are at rock bottom. The rules are rigged against working people. Time to modernise.”
Shadow Minister for Business, Employment Rights and Levelling Up Justin Madders MP appeared to agree with Mandelson’s critics, tweeting this morning that “the case for reform so that we have well paid, secure, trade union recognised jobs is as strong as it has ever been.”
In a new video issued by Momentum, former Shadow Secretary of State for Employment Rights Andy McDonald MP argues that Labour’s New Deal for Working People is popular, urgently needed and needs to be implemented in full.
Momentum point out that Labour Conference unanimously voted for the New Deal for Working People as recently as October. “That means restoring dropped commitments to shift power from a corporate elite to working people.”
They argue that the policy should be implemented in full, including sectoral bargaining across economy, a single tier status of worker for all, and increased sick pay – all commitments dropped by Leadership.
In a detailed twitter thread last year, Angus Satow explained how the New Deal for Working People had been watered down. This latest broadside by Lord Mandelson – not his first attempt to undermine Labour’s commitment on this – suggests that forces on the right of the Party may be preparing a new offensive against this urgently needed and popular policy.
Image: https://www.picpedia.org/legal-17/w/workers-rights.html. License: Creative Commons 3 – CC BY-SA 3.0 Attribution Link: Pix4free.org – link to – https://pix4free.org/ Original Author: Nick Youngson – link to – ttp://www.nyphotographic.com/ Original Image: https://www.picpedia.org/legal-17/w/workers-rights.html
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