Tory Government attacks on Usdaw members:
- Devaluing wages through economic incompetence, recession and sustained periods of low economic growth. Today’s figures have shown that real terms pay is still below where it was in 2008.
- Effectively decriminalising shoplifting and overseeing a 27% increase in theft from shops since 2015. This has been caused by cuts to neighbourhood policing and effectively ending the prosecution of shoplifting below the value of £200.
- Attacking workers’ rights by extending the qualification period for protection against unfair dismissal from one year to two years, halving the consultation period on large scale redundancies and attempting to introduce employment tribunal fees, a move which was defeated by trade unions.
- Undermining trade unions by creating unnecessary bureaucracy through the Trade Union Act and attacking the right to strike with minimum service levels, when they should have been focussed on improving workers’ pay. Unions defeated their attempt to replace striking workers with agency staff.
- Removing opportunities to retrain by ending the Union Learning Fund in England and failing to reform the apprenticeship levy, which has seen apprenticeship starts fall by a third and £3.5 billion transferred from training budgets to the Treasury.
- Hollowing out high streets and communities by ignoring the retail crisis, resulting in hundreds of thousands of shop jobs lost and high streets scarred by tens of thousands of shop closures.
- Attempting to deregulate Sunday trading hours on several occasions, which Usdaw repeatedly defeated because well over 90% of our members oppose any change.
- Making access to flexible working more difficult for parents and carers by removing the statutory framework.
- Denying Woolworth’s and Ethel Austin workers compensation for being made redundant without consultation by fighting Usdaw all the way to the European courts.
- Attempting to restrict access to justice for injured workers by effectively ending legal representation for claims under £5,000. Usdaw led a campaign that defeated this.
Paddy Lillis – Usdaw general secretary says: “The Conservative record on employment rights is one of constant attacks and broken promises. They said they would ‘build back better’ after the pandemic and there would be an employment bill to improve workers’ rights. Neither happened and today we can see that their manifesto will do nothing to tackle poor employment practices.
“In stark contrast, Labour has already promised a plan to make work pay by delivering a new deal for working people. Too many workers have struggled to make ends meet in the Tory cost of living crisis because they are in low-paid and insecure employment. Labour’s plan will be transformational for workers and business, as rogue employers are prevented from undercutting good employers by exploiting workers.
“The Tories have failed workers over the last fourteen years and their manifesto shows they have no plan to improve workers’ lives in the future. Cutting national insurance while freezing tax thresholds is taking with one hand giving with the other. It does little to help the low-paid who are struggling to get the hours they need to earn a weekly wage they can live on. Only Labour has the plan to deliver for Usdaw members and improve workers’ lives.”
Notes for editors:
Usdaw (Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers) is one of the fastest growing unions in the TUC and the UK's fifth biggest trade union with around 360,000 members. Most Usdaw members work in the retail sector, but the union also has many members in transport, distribution, food manufacturing, chemical industry and other trades
www.usdaw.org.uk
Labour’s plan to make work pay: delivering a new deal for working people: https://labour.org.uk/updates/stories/a-new-deal-for-working-people/
For Usdaw press releases visit: http://www.usdaw.org.uk/news and you can follow us on Twitter
@UsdawUnion