At last year’s TUC conference, the employment rights minister, Justin Madders, described Labour’s workers’ rights package as “the sort of thing that would make you say to the person on the street: ‘It does matter who you vote for.’” Despite the bill’s initial offering having been diluted, he is right: day one employment rights, an end to “exploitative” zero-hours contracts and a clampdown on fire-and-rehire.
With the employment bill expected to make its way back to the Commons soon, unions are working hard to ensure that the promises Labour made them in opposition are the policies it delivers while in government.
Instead, even as the government has launched a frenzied publicity offensive over its “tough” immigration stance, it has remained comparably silent over its employment reforms, seeming to shy away from letting news of the bill even reach the person on the street.
The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, has also taken aim at the legislation, accusing Keir Starmer of proposing not an employment bill but an “unemployment bill” that would leave the public with “higher prices, fewer jobs and less growth”.
A Financial Times editorial titled “Labour needs to compromise on employment rights” claimed that, if the party is to “foster the economic dynamism the UK needs”, it will need to go “much further in adjusting the legislation to meet business concerns.”.
