Labour is accused of caving in to more trade union demands and hammering businesses by strengthening Angela Rayners’ workers’ rights plans_Nhy
Labour was last night accused of caving in to more trade union demands and hammering businesses again by strengthening Angela Rayners’ workers’ rights revolution.
New measures added to the flagship Employment Rights Bill will entitle staff to yet more perks as well as making strikes more likely, it is feared.
As many as a million agency workers will be given contracts guaranteeing their hours and bosses will have to pay them if their shifts are cancelled at short notice.
Meanwhile the length of a strike mandate is being doubled to 12 months and the notice period for industrial action is being reduced from 14 to 10 days – despite the majority of consultation respondents opposing the moves.
Shop stewards will be allowed to post union notices on companies’ ‘digital spaces’ such as their intranet pages while electronic balloting will be introduced for votes.
Unions will no longer have to ask members every 10 years if they wish to continue paying into ‘political funds’, which raise millions of pounds for the Labour Party coffers.
And Tory-era laws will be repealed, meaning that walkouts can now take place even if fewer than half of union members take part in ballots and under 40 per cent support strike action.
The measures confirmed in responses to five public consultations published yesterday come on top of the benefits for millions of workers first announced last autumn – including the right to claim unfair dismissal on day one of a new job – which the Government’s own impact assessment estimated would cost businesses £5billion a year.
Angela Rayner’s new workers’ rights plans have been slammed as another caving in to trade union demands
The decision is said to have been taken by Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds and Chancellor Rachel Reeves over concerns the provision would have been too much of a burden
The Deputy Prime Minister insisted that the Employment Rights Bill would trigger a boom in spending because millions of people would have the security to ‘get on in life’
Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said: ‘Many businesses already have worker friendly practices in place and can attest to the positive impact they have on retention, productivity and job satisfaction. We want to go further and untap the UK’s full potential by attracting the best talent and giving business the confidence to hire to help the economy grow.’
But his Conservative counterpart Andrew Griffith said: ‘Jonathan Reynold’s head remains well and truly in the sand as he prepares to unleash waves of low-threshold, short-notice strikes through this unemployment bill under direction of his trade union paymasters.
‘No government serious about growth would be giving this flawed bill the light of day, let alone rushing it through Parliament. Despite months of businesses warning of job losses, price hikes and shuttering up shop, the amendments the government have introduced make the Employment Bill worse not better for businesses and employees.’
John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘Businesses will feel bruised and battered given Labour’s mad employment rights bill has if anything been beefed up.
‘Ministers are staring at economic indicators that are almost all going in the wrong direction, yet instead of trying to energise the private sector they’ve just thrown more red meat to their union backers.’
Len Shackleton of the Institute of Economic Affairs think-tank said: ‘It seems likely that unions representing a small number of employees will have rather greater power.
‘This may mean more strikes, but not necessarily: the threat of strikes is itself enough to boost bargaining power and induce employers to make higher pay offers – which may be inflationary and/or discourage the expansion of employment.’
And leading business groups warned the new burdens on bosses risked undermining the Government’s attempts to revive Britain’s flatlining economy.
Shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith has accused Labour of having ‘its head in the sand’ when it comes to its new workers’ rights law
Tina McKenzie, Policy Chair of the Federation of Small Businesses, said: ‘Ministers must put the work in and understand the damage that taking such a threatening approach to hundreds of thousands of small employers will do. At the end of the day, small business owners are out there trying to grow their businesses, create jobs, and contribute to their communities.
‘The chief concerns among small businesses remain the threat of being taken to court as soon as they take a risk hiring someone, the affordability of proposals on sick pay, and the sheer unworkability of other parts of this mass of complex new rules.’
Chief executive of the CBI Rain Newton-Smith said: ‘Many businesses have told us that it is the unintended consequences of how these policies will be pursued, not the ideas themselves, which will have damaging consequences for growth, jobs and investment.
‘There is a real risk that this legislation imposes a thicket of regulation across all businesses which prevents them from creating the high-quality, secure jobs which we all want to achieve.’
