Keir Starmer faces showdown meeting with unions on worker rights
Keir Starmer faces a potentially explosive meeting with Labour’s union paymasters over claims he is poised to water down workers’ rights reforms.
Sir Keir is due to hold showdown talks with union leaders next week over the party’s flagship New Deal for Working People.
The package, unveiled in 2021 and championed by Angela Rayner, included commitments to ban zero-hour contracts and give workers a ‘right to switch off’ without being contacted outside working hours.
It also proposed making flexible working ‘a day one right’, as well as removing the government’s new restrictions on strikes.
However, there are rumours a ‘finessed’ package of measures is set to be published within weeks.
That could include allowing zero hours contracts if people actively want them, and reducing the rules on out of hours emails to a code of conduct.
Keir Starmer faces a potentially explosive meeting with Labour’s union paymasters over claims he is poised to water down workers’ rights reforms
Labour has denied there will be any weakening of the plan, while accepting there will be implementation detail.
In an interview with the Independent, TUC chief Matt Wrack said there will be a meet between Sir Keir and unions on May 14.
‘My message is that these changes will be extremely popular and vote winners,’ he said.
‘This is a great opportunity for the workers to turn back the tide a little bit on 40-odd years of anti-union and anti-worker legislation, which has tipped the balance in the workplace in favour of employers against the worker and is a factor in increasing inequality in workplaces also in wider society.
‘On this issue, we’ve got a positive gain that we can explain to our members and the reasons I think its popularity has been commented on quite widely.’
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham has warned ‘a red line will be crossed’ if the party U-turns on previous employment pledges.
But Labour has denied flip-flopping, and insisted the plans are not being watered down.
Asked last week if the entire New Deal will be in the manifesto, a spokesman for Sir Keir said: ‘Yes – the New Deal for Working People is going to be in the manifesto.’
They said it would be ‘put into a form that our candidates can campaign on because we see it as a central plank of the election campaign and what we hope to do if we are lucky enough to get into government’.
Ms Graham said: ‘Choosing May Day to give notice of watering down your promise to overhaul one of the worst sets of employment rights in Europe is beyond irony.
‘If Labour do not 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, then a red line will be crossed.’
Labour will still promise workers basic protections from day one of employment but companies will be able to impose probationary periods and staff could be dismissed for ‘fair reasons’, according to the FT.
The New Deal would be the latest Labour policy to be scaled back after the party diluted its flagship £28-billion-a-year green spending pledge.
The Opposition blamed the Government’s handling of the economy when it confirmed the row-back in February, citing Liz Truss’s mini-budget in September 2022 and higher interest rates.
Angela Rayner and Keir Starmer attend a Labour event at Harlow Town FC in Essex recently
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