A group of employers’ bodies – the B5 – consisting of the CBI, manufacturing and engineering group Make UK, the right-wing Institute of Directors, the British Chambers of Commerce and the Federation of Small Businesses, are planning to use peers to submit wrecking amendments to laws that will protect working people.
The B5 has called on peers to “fully scrutinise and improve this legislation” to ensure it was both pro-business and pro-worker and “to prevent unnecessary harm to employment and growth”.
Amendments to the employment rights bill
The legislation is going through the committee stage in House of Lords land the final bill is expected to become law in July this year.
Peers are being asked to submit amendments to the bill, including wrecking amendments to clauses on the protection for zero-hours contract workers and ending the firing and rehiring of employees. They’re also submitting amendments to scupper employment rights from day one, stop unions having the right to organise worker and weaken sick pay provisions.
But unions and a number of Labour peers including John Hendy KC, who is vice president of the Campaign for Trade Union Freedom, have submitted their own amendments to strengthen the already inadequate employment rights bill in favour of workers and trade unions.
Hendy said: “The business proposals come straight from the Conservative Party and are a rerun of Tory amendments submitted in the House of Commons that were roundly defeated.
“They are using age-old arguments about any improvements to workers’ and union rights, trying to put fear into industry and business about any changes to the law. They can’t accept that Labour’s quite mild proposals are popular with workers and voters.”
TUC general secretary Paul Nowak conformed that “The same discredited arguments we are hearing against the bill were used against the introduction of the national minimum wage. They were wrong then and they are wrong now”.
Watering down workers’ rights
General Federation of Trade Unions general secretary, Gawain Little, said: “The employment rights bill, whilst welcome, is already watered down from the original New Deal for Working People – which committed the Labour Party to introduce sectoral collective bargaining arrangements for each sector of the economy and bring the laws on industrial action into line with the UK’s international obligations.
“The only reason for further watering down would be for dodgy employers to force exploitative zero-hours contracts onto marginalised workers or for unscrupulous bosses to use fire and rehire to smash workers terms and conditions.”
National Education Union general secretary, Daniel Kebede, told his union conference over Easter that the employment rights bill was: “A good and important step forward on workers’ rights. For too long, our members have faced poor treatment at work and the means of enforcing those rights have become increasingly protracted. It remains the case that after decades of attacks on trade unions, UK workers remain shackled by some of the most restrictive trade union legislation in Europe. The government should repeal the Conservatives’ anti-union legislation at the earliest opportunity, as part of its plan to make work pay.”
Anti-growth myths
But Tory shadow business minister Andrew Griffith has been peddling myths that the employment bill is “anti-growth”, and that that the government is caving into union ‘barons’ and re-running arguments that have little cut through with the public.
The Campaign for Trade Union Freedom has argued that we need to strengthen the current Bill in favour of working people and trade unions – as well as ensuring that future employment legislation promised in Labour’s New Deal for Workers, Labour keeps to its manifesto promises.
