Sharon Graham, the general secretary of the Unite union, has accused Labour of partly rowing back on its plans to bolster workers’ rights to “curry favour with big business”. At the same time, the party said there had been no watering down of its policies.
Leaked documents, first obtained by the Financial Times, show the party changed the wording of its plans to strengthen workers’ rights at its national policy forum in July in an apparent attempt to head off Tory criticisms of its approach to business.
On Friday morning, Angela Rayner, the party’s deputy leader, whose portfolio covers workers’ rights, said that Labour still intended to ban zero-hours contracts, tackle bogus self-employment and end qualifying periods for rights in the “biggest levelling up of workers’ rights in decades”.
“Far from watering it down, we will now set out in detail how we will implement it and tackle the Tories’ scaremongering,” she added.
However, the leaked text of Labour’s policy from July suggests there may be more flexibility in its approach than before. The party had been planning to create a single “worker” status for all but the genuinely self-employed, ensuring the same rights for everyone regardless of sector, wage or type of contract.
The forum agreed last month to consult on this policy after entering government to create “a simpler framework” that differentiates between workers and the genuinely self-employed in a way that would “properly capture the breadth of employment relationships in the UK” as well as ensure workers can still “benefit from flexible working where they choose to do so”.
Labour also tweaked its plan for “day one” workers’ rights such as sick pay, parental leave and unfair dismissal, saying that this would not prevent “probationary periods with fair and transparent rules and processes”.
Labour’s trade union backers, from Unison to the GMB, favoured the national policy forum result when it met in July, apart from Unite, which withheld its support. At the time, the GMB said Labour had a policy programme “that would make a real difference for workers and industries they work in”.
However, Graham said the leaked text of the policy on workers’ rights showed her union had been right not to back it.
She said: “What is evident is that there has been a clear rowing back on the new deal for working people. The changes made at the national policy forum (NPF) materially watered down workers’ rights, and so could not be supported by Unite. Today, we now know the actual text of the NPF document … Unite was, and is, absolutely justified in taking this position.”
“Labour needs to make the right choices for workers now, not water them down to curry favour with big business. They need to stop wavering and make a clear signal that they are truly the voice for working people.”
The national policy forum is a process that examines possible policies and drafts wording from which Labour forms its next manifesto.
In recent years, we are seeing growing splits in the previously rock-solid relationship between the Labour Party and the unions. The unions provide the primary source of funding for the Labour Party. Still, in 2021, Unite, its biggest backer, voted to cut this funding and, earlier this year narrowly voted to retain its links to the Labour Party.
The unions and the Labour Party have betrayed British workers in recent decades by supporting policies such as mass immigration that have pressured housing, public services and wages in the UK.
The British people need real champions, not just for their rights regarding employment but also to protect their broader rights as natural-born citizens of the United Kingdom. They will not find this within the present main political system or the established unions. Still, we, within the Nationalist movement, can be these champions and create the changes that are needed to make the UK a world leader once again and ensure that the British people are given their rightful place within their nation.
