By Paddy Lillis – Usdaw General Secretary
The campaign reflects the widespread recognition that key workers deserve not just public gratitude, but a fair deal at work – a deal where everyone is properly paid and rewarded for their work and protected from unscrupulous employment practices.
In the years since the pandemic, it has become even clearer that we cannot trust the Tories to deliver the change working people need. After 14 years in power, they have run out of road. Through their longstanding refusal to take action to strengthen employment rights and tackle one-sided flexibility, they have failed to protect people from the cost of living crisis that they created.
The impact their failures have had on Usdaw members is clear from the responses to our latest cost of living survey which found that: a staggering 81.5% of members say they feel worse off now than they did 12 months ago, higher than 77% in 2022 and 39% in 2021; 76% are not able to afford to take sick leave, 61% identify getting ill as a key concern, and 70% say their children are missing out. These figures, and the stories we hear every day from our members, show that we need urgent change. We need a general election and a Labour Government.
The Labour Party was created by the trade union movement and has a strong track record of delivering substantial achievements for working people. Many basic working rights exist because trade unions fought for them and a Labour Government delivered. Sometimes it feels that Labour’s many achievements have been forgotten about, or are now simply taken for granted.
In contrast, over their 14 years of Government, the Tories have failed working people. They commissioned the Taylor Review into Modern Employment Practices, then failed to implement many of its recommendations. They promised greater employment rights in their 2019 manifesto and failed to make good on their promises. Then they promised an Employment Bill on more than 20 occasions which they never delivered.
After being elected in 2010, the Conservative led Government launched a serious attack on workers’ rights. This included making it easier to unfairly dismiss workers, weakening protections against redundancy and removing some protections during a business transfer. Since first coming to power, the Conservatives have overseen a 700% increase in the number of zero-hours contracts.
The Tory Trade Union Act 2016 brought in the most restrictive anti-union laws ever seen in the UK. Strike action and recognition ballots are now even more restricted than they were during the Thatcher years. More than this, during a cost of living crisis plunging millions of households into poverty, the Tories prioritised introducing even more restrictions on the right to strike rather than finally delivering on behalf of working people.
Their repeated broken promises on employment rights, along with attacks on working people and their trade unions, have left working people in vulnerable employment and significantly weakened the economy. As a result, poverty rates have skyrocketed across the UK, with 600,000 more children living in poverty now than in 2010.
While the number of billionaires in the UK has more than trebled since the Tories came to power, we have seen the longest squeeze on real terms wages in over 200 years. This inequality was particularly clear in their attempts to cut taxes for the richest through their disastrous 2022 mini-budget which resulted in sky rocketing mortgage payments, higher food prices and excessive energy prices.
Five prime ministers, seven chancellors, nine work and pensions secretaries and nine business Secretaries in fourteen years. The Tories have not taken their responsibility to run our country seriously and have been caught up with in-fighting while the economy has stagnated, and families have fallen into poverty. The country deserves better, it deserves a government interested in delivering for the people rather than lining their own pockets and protecting their own interests.
Within 100 days of coming into power, a Labour Government will bring forward legislation to deliver its New Deal for Working People. The New Deal will improve workers’ rights, while tackling low-paid insecure employment, which includes: banning zero-hours contracts, ending fire and rehire, extending employment rights to day one in a job, stopping employers cancelling shifts at short notice, clamping down on bogus self-employment, giving trade unions better access to workplaces to help workers get organised, repealing the outrageous minimum service levels legislation, ending the scourge of low pay by making the minimum wage a real living wage and removing exploitative youth rates.
It is only the Labour Party that will deliver a new deal for working people, strengthening our rights at work, making work pay and making work fairer. Labour will tackle workplace discrimination, put mental health on a par with physical health and tackle the retail sector crisis. Labour has been listening to working people and we can be sure Labour will continue to listen to working people.
We cannot take anything for granted. We must speak with people and make the case that we’re not just asking them to vote against the Tories, but give them the reasons to vote for a Labour Government. A vote for the Conservatives is not a vote for working people, their families or their communities. It is only the Labour Party that will bring the changes that working people need.