“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, according to people familiar with the matter,” reported the Financial Times.
“The package, first outlined in 2021, has been billed by Starmer as the biggest increase in workers’ rights for decades,” it continues. “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, the people familiar with the matter said.”
The repeated “people familiar with the matter” is a conveniently vague attribution. But it presumably means someone closer to the policymaking process than the widely disparaged Lord Mandelson who has been running a personal campaign against Labour’s workplace reforms for some time. Just last month, he warned that Labour should not “betray business”.
The vague attribution allowed a Party spokesperson officially to dismiss the reports, saying merely that work was ongoing to present the New Deal measures in “a form that our candidates can campaign on.”
The report, which appeared on May 1st, International Workers’ Day, drew an immediate reaction from trade union leaders. Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham demanded Labour “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” and warned that a “red line will be crossed” if the Party does not do so.
TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak weighed in, saying: “We expect Labour to deliver it with an employment bill in the first 100 days.” FBU leader Matt Wrack warned that any dilution of the policy would provoke a “hostile reaction”. And a Unison spokesperson said: “Consolidating the promised measures is fine, but any watering-down of the contents won’t be.”
Yet it’s clear that the promise to ban zero-hours has already been diluted. Under the Party’s revised plans, although employers would be required to offer a contract based on regular hours worked, workers could opt to stay on zero hours if they chose.
But the IWGB union, which represents gig economy workers, said they feared anything less than an outright ban on the practice would leave precarious workers facing huge pressure to accept exploitative contracts.
A Momentum spokesperson said: “”For fourteen years the Tories have taken a sledgehammer to workers’ rights, while enriching a few at the very top. The New Deal for Working People announced by Labour in 2021 would start rebalancing the scales back towards ordinary people, and is both popular and urgently needed. So it’s beyond disappointing to see Starmer and Reeves capitulate to corporate interests and massively water it down, in yet another major U-turn. Once again, the labour movement and the public are united behind a desire for transformative change, but they are being let down by a Labour Leadership more interested in pleasing big business.”
The group points to how the original New Deal for Working People, unanimously passed by Labour’s 2023 Conference, has been repeatedly watered down. The idea of a single tier of workforce has been put into a ‘consultation process’; full employment rights from one’s first day of work have been weakened. Other commitments, such as collective fair pay agreements across the economy, have also been reduced in scope.
The introduction of these key reforms within 100 days has also been thrown into doubt. A detailed twitter thread by Momentum spokesperson Angus Satow spells this out item by item.
Yet the New Deal for Working People remains highly popular with the public. Polling by Opinium for the Trades Union Congress last September found strong support for its core proposals, even among Conservative voters. Two-thirds of those polled support all workers having a day one right to protection from unfair dismissal, and the same number back a ban on fire and rehire. The same proportion of 2019 Conservative voters polled also backed these reforms.
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