Unions are winning for working people across the UK every day of the week but we also need a Labour Government that will deliver for workers too – enshrining the rights that workers should be able to rely on into law, giving unions new rights to help them organise and win for their members, and putting power back into the hands of working people.

Throughout the pandemic, working people kept our country on its feet by caring for society’s most vulnerable, keeping essential services running and keeping food on shop shelves. However, too many did so whilst being in insecure roles without proper rights and protections. We can’t allow that to continue.

The pandemic bought into sharp focus the imbalance of power in the workplace. Wages have stagnated for over a decade, and work is becoming increasingly insecure. Working people need better rights, stronger unions and a Labour Government to win the new deal at work they deserve.

However, the Conservatives have reacted by crashing the economy from Downing Street with their casino economics, leaving working people to pay with higher prices, higher mortgage rates and weaker employment rights.

Labour’s New Deal for Working People, launched by Angela Rayner at Conference 2021 and drawn up in partnership with Labour’s affiliated unions, is our comprehensive plan to improve the lives of working people by strengthening individual and collective rights.

A Labour Government will bring forward an Employment Bill within 100 days of taking office:

• Labour will strengthen rights at work from day one on the job. We’ll create a single status of worker and remove the qualifying period for basic rights, so everyone is protected from their first day on the job. We’ll strengthen workplace rights for the self-employed too.
• Labour will end fire and rehire so workers can be safe in the knowledge that terms negotiated in good faith can’t be ripped up under threat of dismissal.
• Labour will make work more family-friendly, and it easier to balance work with home, community and family life. We’ll extend statutory maternity and paternity leave, and review and improve shared parental leave. We’ll make flexible working a day one right, and we’ll bring in a new ‘right to switch off’.
• Labour will ban zero-hours contracts. All workers will have the right to a regular contract and predictable hours, reasonable notice of changes in shifts and wages for cancelled shifts paid in full.
• Labour will strengthen trade union rights, raising pay and conditions. Unionised workplaces are more likely to provide decent pay, good training, and benefits. That’s why Labour will strengthen trade unions by repealing anti-union laws, including the 2016 Trade Union Act, and introducing new rights to help unions recruit and organise.
• Labour will roll out Fair Pay Agreements to drive up pay and conditions. Beginning in social care, Fair Pay Agreements will be rolled out to empower workers and trade unions to agree minimum standards across industries on issues such pay and conditions.

We are also committed to opposing this Government’s disruptive anti-worker proposals that will do nothing but land more costs on workers and will oppose and repeal Liz Truss’ further anti-union laws.

The link from the workplace to the Labour Party through its affiliated trade unions is what makes Labour unique.  As MP for Hornsey & Wood Green, I will continue to work collaboratively with local unions to tackle the urgent problems we face as a country, from stagnating wages to insecure work, and do everything I can to raise these issues in Parliament and push for a better deal for working people.