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A FORMER Labour employee has blown the whistle on claims that the party’s call centre workers are treated appallingly under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.
In a piece published on LabourList this week, an employee of Labour’s National Communications Centre in Newcastle said that staff members “don’t know how many hours they will work” week-to-week, and demanded better work practices.
However, a former employee, who worked there under Ed Miliband and is a staunch supporter of Mr Corbyn, got in touch with the Star to dispute this.
They claimed that hours were “flexible” due to the fact that most of the employees were students working part-time.
New general secretary Jennie Formby secured the staff a wage rise to £10 an hour in June.
When asked if they see this as an attempt to humiliate the leadership, the employee told the Star: “Absolutely. It’s about headlines for the Daily Mail.
“Five minutes up the road is a Sports Direct. To somehow insinuate that Corbyn and Jennie are responsible for party staffers going to foodbanks on £10 an hour is an insult to those Sports Direct workers.”
Ironically, the “only reason” this employee left was because of poor workplace practices by their Blairite bosses.
The employee described how after they had made a mistake, a manager organised an impromptu meeting without a union representative and told the employee that they could either face a fine-tooth comb investigation or immediately resign.
“I was crying and panicking because at 17 it was my only way to make a living and study at the same time.
“They knew this, but all they wanted to do was to help me write my resignation.”