Union leaders are demanding no eleventh-hour retreat by the government on workers’ rights now their champion Angela Rayner is no longer in the cabinet.
As delegates gather in Brighton for the TUC’s annual conference, the movement’s leadership is claiming four million people – one in eight of the UK workforce – are in “pervasive” insecure work.
And union bosses are urging the government to stand firm and reject attempts by Tories and Liberal Democrats to weaken the former deputy prime minister’s Employment Rights Bill in its final stages in parliament.
The TUC’s general secretary, Paul Nowak, has claimed Ms Rayner, who resigned on Friday over unpaid stamp duty on a seaside flat, was a victim of misogyny and was being hounded out by right-wing politicians and right-wing media.
Paul Nowak believes Angela Rayner was a victim of misogyny
As well as Ms Rayner leaving the government, the other minister driving the bill through parliament, Jonathan Reynolds, was demoted in Sir Keir Starmer’s cabinet reshuffle from the senior post of business secretary to chief whip.
Until last week, Ms Rayner had been expected to deliver the keynote Labour Party speech at the TUC on Tuesday, but it emerged midweek that the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, would be the speaker.
However, in Friday’s reshuffle she lost responsibility for adult skills – a key issue for the unions – to the new work and pensions secretary Pat McFadden, who will now head a new, beefed-up super-ministry promoting growth.
And ironically, the TUC conference in Brighton is taking place less than two miles from the luxury seaside flat in Hove, on which Ms Rayner’s avoidance of £40,000 in stamp duty led to her resignation as deputy PM, housing secretary and Labour deputy leader.
Just before parliament’s summer recess, the House of Lords backed by 304 votes to 160 a Tory-led amendment to Ms Rayner’s bill to reduce the qualifying period for unfair dismissal claims from two years to six months, rather than from day one, as proposed by Ms Rayner.
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The rise and fall of Angela Rayner
Third reading of the bill in the Lords was last Wednesday, the day of Ms Rayner’s Sky News confession, and the bill is now set for parliamentary ping-pong, assuming the government overturns the Lords’ amendments in the Commons.
But in a pre-conference interview with Sky News, TUC chief and Rayner supporter Mr Nowak demanded no diluting of her bill, which also includes banning zero hours contracts which exploit workers and fire and rehire.
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“We are now at a crucial stage in the delivery of the Employment Rights Bill, just weeks away from Royal Assent,” said Mr Nowak. “And our clear message to the government will be to deliver the bill and deliver it in full.
“Ignore the amendments from the unelected peers, Tory and Lib Dem peers in the House of Lords, that are aimed at gutting the legislation, weakening workers’ rights.
“Stand with the British public, deliver decent employment rights. That’s important in workplaces up and down the country, but it’s important because these are proposals that are popular with the British public as well.”
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson will be making a speech at the TUC’s conference
The TUC says its analysis shows low-paid jobs in occupations such as the care, leisure and service sectors account for 77% of the increase in insecure jobs since 2011.
Black and ethnic minority ethnic workers account for 70% of the explosion in insecure work, according to the TUC, and southwest England and Yorkshire and Humber are insecure work hotspots.
Mr Nowak told Sky News: “We’ve got well over a million people now on zero-hours contracts. We’ve got millions of people who don’t have sick pay from day one and 70% of the kids who live in poverty have parents who go out to work.
“The government is absolutely right to be focused on making work pay. And the Employment Rights Bill is about putting more money in the pockets of working people, giving people more security at work.
“That’s good for workers, but it’s also good for good employers as well, so they’re not undercut by the cowboys.”
Speaking to Sky News last Wednesday, shortly after Ms Rayner’s tearful confession to Sky’s political editor Beth Rigby, Mr Nowak said: “There’s a real heavy dose of misogyny when it comes to Angela.
“Angela Rayner is playing a really important role in government and I wouldn’t want to see her hounded out of an important role by right-wing politicians and the right-wing media, who frankly can’t handle the fact that a working-class woman is our deputy prime minister.”
