Yahoo Finance It's now clear this government wants UK workers to have as little power as possible
As workers, families and businesses negotiate the hardest of hard times in this pandemic – trying to stay safe, care for their kids, fulfil their working responsibilities and keep their firms afloat – we now discover that some ministers’ thoughts are elsewhere. Now, in this post-Brexit Britain, they are planning their vision of the future.
Unfortunately, it’s one that threatens to make our profound injustices far worse. That future involves ministers contemplating ripping up hard-won workers’ rights: from the safety cap that protects people from being made to work more than 48 hours a week – which is vital for key workers, such as those in the NHS, haulage and airlines – to undermining paid holiday, rest breaks at work and other protections.
Ministers have promised time and again that have no plans to diminish workers’ rights, and they are continuing to stick to the line after this latest revelation about their plans – but there has been no denial that these specific proposals are on the table and under active consideration. Indeed, we should be clear that the key question is not whether they want to row back on workers’ rights – of course they do.
This, after all, is the deregulated race to the bottom of which they have long dreamed. The new business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, even co-wrote a whole pamphlet proposing to exempt startup firms from employment legislation, moving away from a national minimum wage so it could be lower in some areas of the country. Elsewhere he co-authored a book that memorably claimed that the British are “among the worst idlers in the world”. The government has failed to bring in the employment bill that it promised would protect and enhance workers’ rights, and Boris Johnson himself flippantly explained just at the end of last year that maintaining workers’ rights really just means not sending children back up the chimneys.
It’s worth taking a step back here and understanding what all this means. Our country is racked by deep inequality, injustice and powerlessness. From the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath to the pandemic, we have seen these injustices graphically exposed. But today we have a Conservative government that still thinks the way to address this situation is to take rights away from those who have few and make the imbalances of power in our workplaces even worse.
Take the experience of the pandemic. We have seen some workers feel unable to ensure their own safety, scared to raise complaints and compelled to come in to the office despite the government’s instruction to work from home. The government would make this powerlessness worse.
The scourge of low pay and insecure work didn’t happen because workers are idle, as Kwarteng believes, or because our labour markets are too highly regulated. Quite the opposite. We are among the most deregulated labour markets of advanced countries, and millions of workers in the UK already work very long hours.
What is emerging is not a new vision of Britain at all, but just more of what has been tried – and which has failed – by the Conservatives in the last four decades. What an unambitious, pessimistic and negative view of our country they have, believing that the way for us to compete and succeed is on low wages and few rights. This is the wrong priority for Britain, and way out of step with the priorities of the British people. Just as it has not worked before, it will not work this time.
There is a different path for our country. The pandemic has imposed huge hardship on workers and families in the UK. As we emerge from this emergency, we cannot go back to business as usual. We owe it to them to build a better and fairer future for Britain.
It is not workers living in fear or forced to work so many hours that they cannot see their families that make for a successful country; it is workers who feel safe and secure. And it is businesses who value their employees and foster a positive working environment, with the best terms and conditions for their workers, including recognising the need for families to be able to balance their caring and working lives.
Of the countless businesses that I have spoken to during this crisis, none have said to me that the priority for recovery is to take a sledgehammer to workers’ rights. So many of them recognise the deep injustices of our country, and that we will become more productive or more fair not by competing on low wages and low rights but by raising standards and investing in the infrastructure, skills and industries of the future: a race to the top, not a race to the bottom.
Indeed, in the worst of times, during the pandemic, we have seen a spirit we can build on: businesses and trade unions working together for the benefit of companies and the country, many firms stepping up to do the right thing for their workers, and an ethos of helping each other. This spirit of togetherness and cooperation is a world away from the harsh, deregulated vision ministers want to serve up.
The real question over the coming months is not whether the government wants to weaken worker protections, but whether it can get away with it. Progressive businesses, trade unions, workers and families know that this is not the right future for our country. This a fight about who we are as a country, who we want to be, and whether we build a Britain that works for people and families or not. It is a fight we cannot, and will not, lose.
• Ed Miliband is the Labour MP for Doncaster North and shadow business, energy and industry secretary
