FOREWORD

So many people’s working lives are dominated by low pay, insecurity and powerlessness. It is a sign of this broken system that many people - and not just the lowest earners - are forced to top up their monthly wage with debt, just to cover their living costs.

As our economy has flatlined under the Tories, wages have stagnated. People are, on average, paid less that they were 10 years ago. This is a scandal that must end. The is the only party that is committed to eradicating in-work poverty within the next Parliament.

People spend so much of their time at work and that time should not be characterised by worry and fear. As a government, we will be on the side of the worker, the good employer and the trade unionist, while putting exploitative employers on notice.

Our transformative programme for workers would give them real power, real respect and dignity, while changing the culture of work in this nation. By breathing hope into workplaces across Britain, we can achieve real change.

Laura Pidcock Shadow Secretary of State for Employment Rights

4 ON YOUR SIDE INTRODUCTION THE NEED FOR CHANGE IN OUR WORKING LIVES

Work should provide a decent life for for most people, with average real all those who do it. As well as respect wages still lower than ten years ago. and dignity at work, it should provide Meanwhile, incomes for those at the people with the security, earnings very top have soared away, leaving our and leisure time needed to enjoy a full country increasingly unequal and unfair. life outside of work – to make plans In the modern economy some workers for the future and to save up to go are required to work excessive hours on holiday. It can also be a gateway while others are unable to obtain to learning new skills, the creation of enough hours each week and month opportunities and the opening up of to sustain a decent standard of living. horizons. Rising workloads mean many people Yet for growing numbers of people are working harder and faster just to their experience is one of low pay, stand still, leaving them overworked job insecurity and uncertain hours and exhausted. Others struggle with – whether long and arduous, or not unpredictable hours and insecure enough to live on. Too many people find earnings. Too many workers across their work makes their life more difficult Britain are on zero hours contracts and not less, causing anxiety, stress and fear other precarious arrangements that for the future. It leaves people unable deny them enough regular, secure to save, afraid of being ill and finding hours to earn a decent living. it difficult to find time to spend with Too many people – not just those at the family and friends. very bottom of pay-scales – feel that Work no longer guarantees a way out they are living on the edge, struggling of poverty. TUC analysis has found to make ends meet. Discrimination that in 2010, 1 in 5 children in working causes harm. It continues to limit households were growing up in poverty; opportunities for individuals and means by 2018 this had increased to 1 in that society is missing out from failing 4. Growing numbers receive in-work to harness everyone’s potential. benefits because employers don’t pay This isn’t inevitable and things don’t them enough. Wage growth has stalled have to stay this way.

WORKERS’ RIGHTS 5 As a country we can and should be better than this. We can create the conditions where work leaves people feeling confident about their future and their children’s future. Where work gives people security, better pay, the ability to save up for and enjoy holidays. Where work offers people opportunities and ways to take advantage of them.

A Labour government will transform and rebuild our economy, creating high quality, skilled jobs in every region and nation in the UK through our Green Industrial Revolution and expansion of public services. As part of this we will bring about the biggest extension of workplace rights that our country has ever seen and remove unnecessary and unfair restrictions on our trade unions, so that workers can have their voice heard.

This won’t just improve people’s lives, it will make our economy much stronger.

It is widely known that too many big businesses take short-term decisions – putting immediate short term profits ahead of anything else, often at the expense of their workforces, productivity and long-term sustainability. Widespread exploitative practices allow good employers to be undercut by bad ones. Putting in place measures that will create better working lives will help turnaround our country’s poor productivity, encourage employers’ to think about the longer term and help end Britain’s reckless corporate culture.

6 ON YOUR SIDE IMPROVING OUR WORKING LIVES

Making working people’s It doesn’t make sense that on an issue so important to lives better will be at everyone’s life there isn’t a government department the heart of what we do taking an overview of what is needed in the same in government. Labour way as there is for health, education, business, social will start by creating a security and, as Labour is proposing, for housing. Ministry of Employment We will create a minimum ‘rate for the job’ and a floor Rights. A Secretary of of standards in each sector of the economy by rolling State of Employment out sectoral . Rights will give workers a strong voice at the centre This means in each industry employers and trade of government and unions will be brought together to negotiate minimum drive through our plans standards on a wide range of issues affecting people’s to transform industrial working lives, including pay scales, hours, holidays, relations in Britain promotion, training, health and well-being and equality through a huge roll out policies. No longer will terms be dictated on a ‘take it or of individual and leave it’ basis. collective rights. Many of the most successful companies know they need to talk to their workforces about pay scales and the issues at work that affect their lives. Labour will

WORKERS’ RIGHTS 7 support and improve these Raising wages practices and ensure they exist A Labour government will transform across our economy. peoples’ working lives by making pay Existing national collective bargaining higher and we will end in-work poverty arrangements will be supported, in our first term by tackling the causes strengthened and extended where of poverty and inequality, such as low they already exist, such as local pay and high living costs, and raise the government, construction, health care, floor provided by our social safety net. and agriculture in Wales, Scotland and As well as increasing wages through Northern Ireland. We will re-establish an sectoral collective bargaining Labour Agricultural Wages Board in England so will: every part of the UK is covered and we will bring back the School Support Staff • Rapidly introduce a Real Negotiating Body and national pay of at least £10 for everyone aged settlements for teachers and it will be 16 and over, ending discrimination rolled out in sectors where it does not against young workers. We will use currently exist. savings to the public finances to help small businesses to manage the extra These new collective bargaining cost. We will also consult with unions institutions (Bargaining Councils) will and industry on future uprating to be the foundation of our agenda to improve living standards. transform the world of work. They will prevent good employers being • Restore public sector pay to at least undercut by bad ones and stop the race pre-financial crisis levels (in real terms), to the bottom in pay, end job insecurity, by delivering year-on-year above- set a minimum ‘rate for the job’ – not inflation pay rises, starting with a 5% a ceiling - and make workplaces safer, increase, to reward and retain the more equal and better places to work. people who do so much for us all.

In starting to roll out national sectoral • Ban unpaid internships except when collective bargaining we will prioritise they are part of an education or sectors where pay and work standards training course – because requiring are particularly poor and urgently in people to work for free is exploitative need of improvement. Care work, for and wrong. example, is increasingly outsourced, • Require rest and meal breaks during insecure and fragmented, eroding shifts to be paid and in sectors such as the rights and pay of the workforce - social care, for example, ensure travel overwhelmingly women. Not only is this time is paid and take action on ‘sleep bad for workers, it is also pushing down over’ hours. the quality of services provided.

8 ON YOUR SIDE We will take action to achieve equal A better work life balance pay by; People need a greater say over their • Requiring employers to devise and working hours, so the hours they implement plans to eradicate the work suit their lives as well as their gender pay gap and pay inequalities occupations. At the moment it is too underpinned by race and/or disability much of a one-way street. Flexibility – or face fines. After 50 years of needs to work for employers and the equal pay legislation, we will make people that work for them, not at their the law work to ensure equal pay for expense. work of equal value. This will include People should be able to enjoy time requiring all employers with over 250 with their families and loved ones. That employees to obtain government means addressing two problems. Firstly, certification on gender equality or face the excessive hours culture that has further auditing and fines. Women will been allowed to take a hold in some no longer be penalised by secretive parts of our economy. Last year UK pay and bonus setting. By the end companies took the benefit of £32.7 of 2020, we will lower the threshold billion of free work through people to workplaces with 50 employees doing unpaid overtime. Across our and will make sure we provide the public services cuts have meant smaller necessary additional support for workforces with heavier workloads. small businesses. We will ensure Secondly, those on precarious class actions can be brought against arrangements need the security of employers where there is a clear predictable, regular, hours and earnings pattern of unequal pay based on a to enable them to have a decent protected characteristic. standard of living – because people’s • Introducing equality audits that cover rent or mortgage, childcare and more than just pay on each protected commuting costs don’t vary from week characteristic in the Equality Act and to week, or month to month and people reinstate Equality questionnaires. need to be able to plan their life.

• Requiring large employers to Having a work-life balance, instead report annually on the number and of stressfully trying to juggle our proportion of disabled people they responsibilities, makes for a happier, employ. healthier life and better relationships. It makes sense for individuals and for • Enabling positive action for business. Productivity in the UK has recruitment to roles where employers nosedived to the lowest in Europe; can justify the need for more diversity. neither exhaustion nor insecurity leads to people working productively.

WORKERS’ RIGHTS 9 Labour will give workers more security • Introducing four new bank holidays in their working hours by: celebrating our four patron saints’ days. All bank holidays will be with pay. • Banning zero hours contracts and fixing minimum hours. We will • Extending statutory maternity pay strengthen the law so that those who from nine to twelve months. work regular hours for more than 12 • Doubling paternity leave from two to weeks will have a right to a regular four weeks and increasing statutory contract, reflecting those hours. We paternity pay. will protect workers who have worked irregular hours for 12 weeks so they • Reviewing family-friendly too can transition to a regular hours employment rights, including rights to contract if they wish. We will not allow respond to family emergencies during British law to fall below the standards working hours for all workers. of the EU Directive on Transparent • Introducing statutory bereavement and Predictable Working Time of June leave, so that workers have time off 2019. to grieve the loss of close family • Requiring cancelled shifts to be paid members or after experiencing and proper notice given for changes in miscarriage or stillbirth. hours. This will mean that all workers • Ending the opt-out provision for the get proper notice of their working EU Working Time Directive of the hours so they can plan their life. maximum 48 hour working week, Employers’ flexibility doesn’t have making sure working time regulations to leave people worse off; if people are enforced and reviewing unpaid are asked to work extra hours, they overtime, to stop excessively long will be paid at a higher rate. This will hours that erode people’s quality of encourage employers to be realistic in life and can be dangerous in some setting working hours. This still allows occupations. flexibility for employers where needed, but not at the expense of their • Setting up an independent Working workforce having unpredictable hours Time Commission to advise on raising and earnings. minimum holiday entitlements, rest periods between shifts and reducing • Keeping the restrictions on Sunday maximum weekly working time as trading in place. quickly as possible without increasing Labour will support a better work life unemployment. Within a decade balance and stronger family-friendly we will reduce the average full-time rights by: weekly working hours to 32 across the economy, with no loss of pay, funded

10 ON YOUR SIDE by productivity increases. Labour will We will: invest to increase productivity and • Give everyone full and equal rights from will make working hours, including day one at work, whether part-time or reductions in working time, one of the full-time, temporary or permanent. We areas covered by collective bargaining will end the qualifying time for basic with workers and employers rights, such as unfair dismissal, sick pay negotiating a way to improve working and parental leave to end the arbitrary hours for their sector. unfairness in of the system. Labour will give workers greater • End bogus self-employment by flexibility by: creating a new, single “worker” status • Giving all workers the right to flexible covering all but the genuinely self- working, not just the right to ask, employed in business on their own by creating a presumption in favour account. This will simplify and clarify of flexible working and a duty on the law, making it easier for employers employers to accommodate workers’ and people to understand, reducing requests so far as is reasonably costly litigation. Labour will prevent practicable. We will work with small the status of worker being evaded by and medium sized businesses on what artificial payroll companies or agency support they need to enable flexible working and ban overseas-only working practices and to increase the recruitment practices. uptake of flexible working by those who • Ensure justice for migrant domestic need it. workers, by ensuring they are workers • We will also ensure that there are with full rights, able to change additional steps taken to ensure employer, so ending this form of effective flexibility for those with modern slavery. We will restore the caring responsibilities for loved ones, overseas domestic workers’ visa. particularly disabled people or those • Restore and expand the Union who are terminally ill. Learning Fund and make life-long learning and skills development a reality, including giving people Rebuilding and expanding the right to accrue rights at work for education and training, so that A Labour government will bring about people can progress at work and take the biggest extension of rights for advantage of technological change. workers that our country has ever • Require employers to create and seen to make our economy and society maintain workplaces and working fairer and ensure the rewards of growth conditions free from harassment, are shared.

WORKERS’ RIGHTS 11 including by third parties. No one • Ensure employers uphold their should be harassed at work, yet we obligations to consult with recognised know from the outpouring of #MeToo trade unions. In government we will experiences and TUC research that review and amend legislation relating more than half of women experience to ‘protected conversations’ in order to sexual harassment at work. We know prevent existing rights at work being that people in public facing roles undermined. such as health, retail, bus driving • Bring UK law into line with the and postal work are at risk of “third International Labour Organisation party harassment” – we will reinstate standards it has ratified, the European and strengthen this provision in the Convention on Human Rights, and the Equality Act. European Social Charter so that Britain • Ensure that public-facing workers leads the world instead of engaging in are protected by toughening the law a race to the bottom. Labour will also against abuse and violence. ratify new international laws such as the International Labour Organisation • Introduce 10 days of paid leave for (ILO) Convention on preventing survivors of domestic abuse. violence and harassment at work. • Require employers to make reasonable adjustments to assist those going through the menopause. freedom, worker voice

• Ensure that workers are not subject Many of the things that help make our to undue and belittling snooping, working lives happier – paid holidays, surveillance and monitoring at work. pensions, weekends, health and safety at work, a , rights against • Introduce a legal right to collective discrimination, maternity and paternity consultation on the implementation of rights and more - have been won by new technology in workplaces. people working through their trade • Bring back specialist employment unions. advisors, introducing a government- But trade unions have been tied up by backed Reasonable Adjustments unfair legal restrictions over the last 40 Passport scheme to help disabled years and have not been able to defend people move between jobs more workers properly. The growth of insecure easily, and review support for work, exploitative working practices, and disabled people to find and stay in ‘take it or leave it’ conditions of work has work, including how we can expand, come about because the balance of strengthen and better promote Access power in the workplace has tipped too to Work support. much towards bad employers.

12 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE Labour will reset the scales. As a the time to support colleagues facing country we should be leading the world, discrimination and contribute to rather than joining a race to the bottom positive changes in workplaces that in employment standards. make discrimination less likely to happen in the future. Labour will: • Remove unnecessary restrictions on • Repeal anti-trade union legislation, industrial action and allow people including the Conservatives’ to take industrial action through undemocratic Trade Union Act 2016, their trade union when they feel and create new rights and freedoms it’s the only option left against bad for trade union unions to help them and unreasonable employers. We win a better deal for working people, will remove the unnecessary and negotiate better pay and quality of bureaucratic barriers placed on people working life and enable people to and trade unions trying to make their organise in their workplace if they working lives better and make sure wish to. their rights are respected. • Simplify the law around union • We will restrict the grounds on which recognition, ending the current employers can resort to legal action complexity and removing barriers to based on technicalities to override workers being collectively represented legitimate, democratic decisions by a recognised trade union in their taken by the people who work for workplace. them. Employers should come to the • Strengthen and enforce trade unions’ negotiating table, rather than resort right of entry to organise, meet and to legal action. This harms industrial represent their members and to relations, and fails to deal with the recruit. People shouldn’t have to face underlying problems that make a difficulties at work alone, and workers workforce so desperate they are should be able to freely organise prepared to take . with their colleagues to make their • Allow workers and trade unions to workplaces better for everyone if they use secure electronic and workplace wish to. balloting. • Make sure trade union reps are able • Ban union-busting and strengthen to take enough time off to perform protection of trade union their union-related duties, undertake representatives against unfair relevant training and take part in their dismissal and of union members union’s democratic structures. from intimidation, harassment, • Introduce statutory time off for trade threats and blacklisting. union equalities reps so they have

WORKERS’ RIGHTS 13 • Hold a public inquiry into the injustice new materials, and ensure that injury, of blacklisting to ensure that it truly illness and death from work is reduced becomes and remains a thing of the to the minimum and that when it past. We will release all papers on the does occur the burden does not fall Shrewsbury 24 trials and 37 Cammell disproportionately on workers and Laird shipyard workers. their families.

• Make sure the £200 billion of public Many workers – bus, lorry and train money the government spends on drivers, construction, warehousing, contracts in the private sector is spent agriculture, and call centre workers in a way that rewards good employers - are regularly denied basics such a rather than bad. We will choose to rest, access to toilets and toilet breaks. do business with companies that: Our Royal Commission will make sure treat their workers well, recognise everyone at work has access to basic trade unions and have provision for facilities such as toilets and toilet breaks. collective bargaining arrangements We will review the law to prevent sick and fair wages clauses; have effective or injured workers being unreasonably equality policies; adhere to high disciplined or subject to capability environmental standards; are fully procedures as a means to dismissal. tax compliant; strengthen local jobs We will also, and supply chains; and constrain boardroom excess with fairer pay • Introduce a maximum temperature ratios. In the public sector we will for workplaces, closing loopholes to enforce a pay ratio of 20:1. We will ensure all workplaces are covered tackle late payments that leave small by health and safety legislation, for businesses and the self-employed example, drivers’ cabs, and look at waiting months to be paid, including how we deliver this protection for banning late payers from public outdoor workers. procurement. • Put mental health on a par with physical health in our workplaces.

Making workplaces healthier and safer • Work with trade unions and employers to raise awareness of neurodiversity Labour will set up a Royal Commission – a term covering but not limited to to review the law on health and safety autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia at work to revise our dated legislation and dyscalculia – in the workplace, and make it fit for now and the future. in public services and across wider The Royal Commission will make society. provision for stress, mental health, • Consider how we could introduce the impact of new technology and ‘roving safety reps’ for workplaces -

14 ON YOUR SIDE the right for trade union health and • Strengthen protections for pregnant safety reps to inspect workplaces and women, making it unlawful to employers other than their own. dismiss a woman who is pregnant or for 12 months after giving birth • Allow workers to bring civil cases for without the certification of the Worker breaches of statutory health and Protection Agency. Where her job is safety regulation. under threat of redundancy for this • Defend workers’ ability to recover legal period she will have the right of first representation costs from negligent refusal of any suitable alternative job. employers and keep the right for • Strengthen the protection for workers to be represented and recover whistleblowers because such actions their costs in cases of employer protect others. negligence leading to injury at work. • Increase protection against redundancy for people wherever Better Job Security they work. When redundancies are under consideration all workers must Losing your job can be a distressing be properly consulted at the earliest and disruptive experience. It can turn stage regardless of where they work your world upside down and throw or the size of the workforce. We will the future into doubt and turmoil, increase the obligation on employers especially when it happens unfairly. to provide help with training and Ending someone’s employment will job finding for those who are made sometimes be necessary, but we can redundant. limit the damage caused by job losses by making sure they only happen when • Let struggling companies go into necessary or right. protective administration, so they can be sold as a going concern rather We will; than collapsing into insolvency. • Give people the basic right to be • Improve statutory minimum protected from unfair dismissal from redundancy pay by an extra half a their first day at work, because unfair week’s pay for each year of service dismissal is by definition unfair and under the age of 40 and by an extra there is no justification in it not being one week’s pay for each year of a day one right. We will make it easier service over the age of 41 with no to prove unfair dismissal and give full maximum number of years. We will compensation without statutory limits review the level of the capped weekly to those who are unfairly dismissed rate and its operation in consultation and do not wish to be reinstated. with trade unions and employers.

WORKERS’ RIGHTS 15 • Make sure workers do not suffer come with a price tag. We will extend when moving from one contractor to their powers and introduce new Labour another or suffer when a business is Courts with a stronger role for people transferred from one owner to another with industrial experience on panels. (including by a share buy-out). This We will extend the time period for can be an anxious and uncertain time, bringing claims. so we will strengthen ‘TUPE’ to make There will be tougher penalties for those sure that all terms and conditions and who break the law or fail to comply agreements are transferred to the new with tribunal orders, including personal owner, and that people’s trade union liability for those that were directors and individual rights are protected. of companies at the time. Workers • Seek to develop collective income will receive full compensation without protection insurance schemes for the statutory limits if they suffer loss self-employed. because of employers’ breaches of the law.

Enforcing rights Engaging and including workers We will make our rights at work meaningful, not just rights on paper, Labour will engage the knowledge by creating a new unified Workers and experience of the workforce Protection Agency that will be to make our businesses better and given extensive powers to inspect tackle the reckless corporate culture workplaces and bring prosecutions and that is damaging our economy. Large civil proceedings on workers’ behalf. companies with 250 or more workers Many existing rights, do not have a will reserve a third of the seats on government body responsible for company boards and remuneration enforcing them or that people, trade committees for elected worker- unions, and employers concerned directors. about being undercut can involve in We will give workers a stake in the workplace issues if needed. companies they work for – and a share This failure to enforce the law doesn’t of the profits they help create – by just hurt workers who lose out on their requiring large companies to set up rights, it is also bad for good employers Inclusive Ownership Funds (IOFs). Up who have to compete unfairly with those to 10% of a company will be owned who are prepared to break the law. collectively by employees, with dividend payments distributed equally We will keep employment tribunals among all, capped at £500 a year, free, because justice at work shouldn’t and the rest being used to top up the

16 ON YOUR SIDE Climate Apprenticeship Fund. The cap will rise to ensure that no more than 25% of dividends raised by IOFs are redistributed in this way.

We will also harness the expertise and insight people gain through their work to strengthen our industrial strategy, by ensuring trade union representation on sector councils, on learning, skills and apprenticeship bodies and on other statutory bodies such as the Competition and Markets Authority which have a direct effect on their working lives.

Conclusion

These changes will transform workplaces and working life, benefitting the more than 30 million workers in Britain and their families. It is time for real change in our working lives.

13238_19 Reproduced from electronic media, promoted by Jennie Formby, General Secretary, the Labour Party, on behalf of the Labour Party, both at, Southside, 105 Victoria Street, London, SW1E 6QT.