Latest editorial
TRADE unions have reacted angrily to revelations that the government is planning a fresh assault on workers’ rights.
A chorus of protest followed a report in today’s Financial Times that a “post-Brexit” package of “deregulatory measures” is being prepared by the Department for Business “with the approval of Downing Street,” although it has not yet been discussed by the Cabinet or agreed by ministers.
The package was said to include scrapping the 48-hour cap on weekly working hours, “tweaking” rules on rest breaks and discounting overtime when calculating holiday pay.
LAURA PIDCOCK and PAUL O’CONNELL introduces Rise, a political platform for working-class activism
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
