Latest editorial
Amazon staff members on a GMB union picket line outside the online retailer's site in Coventry, as they take part in a strike in their long-running dispute over pay, March 19, 2024
UNION activists and supporters gathered in central London on Saturday calling for major improvements to the government’s Employment Rights Bill currently passing through Parliament, writes Adrian Weir.
Union leaders, rank-and-file activists, leading labour lawyers, progressive academics and MPs lined up at the Campaign for Trade Union Freedom rally to point out the Bill’s shortcomings.
Many argue that the present Bill is far from what Labour originally promised in its New Deal for Working People, adopted at party conference.
Labour’s long-promised Act has scraped through the Lords. While the law marks a step forward, its lack of collective rights leaves workers short-changed — and sets the stage for a renewed campaign for an Employment Rights Bill #2, argues TONY BURKE
Labour must not allow unelected members of the upper house to erode a single provision of the Employment Rights Bill, argues ANDY MCDONALD MP
The Bill addresses some exploitation but leaves trade unions heavily regulated, most workers without collective bargaining coverage, and fails to tackle the balance of power that enables constant mutation of bad practice, write KEITH EWING and LORD JOHN HENDY KC
It is only trade union power at work that will materially improve the lot of working people as a class but without sector-wide collective bargaining and a right to take sympathetic strike action, we are hamstrung in the fight to tilt back the balance of power, argues ADRIAN WEIR