AT THE recent STUC conference in Dundee Alex Salmond gave the most lacklustre performance I have seen from the master showman in a long time. 

Salmond’s body language, demeanour and evident lack of enthusiasm came as a real surprise to me as someone who watches him at close hand week in week out in the Scottish Parliament. But what surprised me more was how little he had to offer (basically some announcements on apprenticeships and check off). 

The following day Labour leader Johann Lamont spoke to Congress outlining how Labour would use existing powers and the powers promoted by the party’s devolution commission to promote a whole swathe of reforms or new legislation to improve the rights and well-being of working people. 

Across Britain Labour is committed to: 

Increasing the minimum wage.

Removing tribunal lodging fees.

Reversing the Tory attack on Tupe essential protections.

Strengthening agency workers’ rights across Britain, providing better terms and conditions and act as a deterrent to cross-border malpractice.

Reversing the Tory two-year qualifying period for unfair dismissal to bring security to workers in new posts.

Action to tackle bogus self-employment.

In Scotland, Scottish Labour will:-

Deliver legislation that gives the families of work accident victims a genuine possibility of justice through prosecutions to ensure that the law serves as a deterrent to employers who cut corners and engage in risky practices. 

To achieve this it will support Patricia Ferguson MSP’s members’ bill to reform the outdated Fatal Accident Inquiry system to ensure we have a system that responds quicker to help bring justice to families and friends of workers involved in fatal accidents and strengthens enforcement, delivering a system where recommendations from sheriffs are binding to prevent future injury or deaths from occurring.

Scottish Labour will establish a Scottish health and safety executive to set enforcement priorities, goals and objectives in Scotland and tackle the scandal that workers are more likely to die at work in Scotland than anywhere else in Britain.

Scottish Labour believes that responsibility for the operation of employment tribunals should be devolved to Scotland in order to promote access to justice. Both in Scotland and across the Britain, Labour will give workers access to tribunals where and when needed without fees.

We believe in delivering a fair day’s wage for every worker and are committed to an expansion of the living wage. Our amendments to the SNP government’s procurement bill would have delivered this expansion. 

We will close the low pay loophole which allows for the contracting out of jobs where public sector bodies employ people directly, meaning they can pay people less than the living wage.

We are committed to devolving the enforcement of equalities legislation. 

We also support any other transfer of power, should it be required, to ensure that women are fairly represented on Scotland’s public boards and in other public appointments.

On apprenticeships, we will widen access to jobs through targeted use of gender quotas for the Modern Apprenticeship STEM subjects. 

We have challenged the SNP government to ensure apprenticeship laces had quotas applied to them after it emerged that only two per cent of construction and engineering places were being taken by women.

We will incentivise businesses to take on young people — £16m is available in consequentials from recent Westminster budgets to fund youth employment which could have been used to assist businesses with the start-up costs of taking on young people.

Our amendments to the procurement bill would have ensured government contracts were being prioritised to those businesses who took on apprentices.

We will initiate a review of striking miners’ convictions. 

Scottish Labour believes that many of the convictions are unsafe and are the result of state forces being used for political goals following revelations included in Cabinet papers released under the 30-year rule.

We are committed to holding an independent inquiry into the convictions of miners from the 1984/85 Miners’ Strike.

This is a package of practical measures that the whole of the labour movement should get behind. 

I look forward to working with comrades across the Labour and trade union movement to deliver real change for working people.  

Neil Findlay is MSP for Lothian