Matt Wrack General Secretary of the FBU and President of the TUC at Congress 2024

The TUC recently published a report, "Making employment rights work", timed for their annual Congress, which was held over September 8-11 in Brighton [1].

The context of the report is the Labour Party's "New Deal", originally drawn up in agreement with Labour-affiliated unions, reflected in the Congress theme of "A New Deal for Working People", which emerged amid industrial action and a growing movement under the slogan "Enough is Enough!" in conditions of deepening disequilibrium between employer and worker. From the perspective of the Labour Party, the New Deal was to be used to bring workers on side, particularly in the run up to the election. By the time of the election, it had already been reduced to a set of policy objectives [2].

Against this background, the TUC is conscious of the necessity to defend the rights of working people and to hold the government to account, aware, as they say in their report, that "rights are only worth something if they are upheld", in other words, given a guarantee.

The TUC points to what it refers to as the Britain's "flexible labour markets" (a euphemism for working conditions where all of the flexibility is the side of the worker, who is supposed to bend over backwards for the sake of the business) and lack of enforcement of basic working rights which are causing employers to fail to honour these rights insofar as they are recognised. Last year, writes the TUC, 1.1 million UK workers missed £2 billion in paid holiday, with 6% of BME employees not receiving any holiday pay at all. In 2022, one in five workers supposedly receiving the National Living or Minimum Wage were not actually paid the correct amount, they go on to say. Further, 1.8 million workers reported not receiving a payslip, making it difficult for their pay to be subject to scrutiny. According to the TUC, the enforcement system is failing vulnerable migrant workers, with at least 130,000 victims estimated in Britain.

The TUC report sets out a five-point plan for the enforcement of workers' rights:

1. Create a properly resourced single enforcement body with a strong union voice in its governance structures
2. Recycle fines back into the enforcement system
3. Increase the number of inspectors and inspections
4. Extend the licensing scheme to new sectors
5. Build international links and create a firewall with immigration enforcement to crack down on the exploitation of migrant workers.

This last point includes the call to separate immigration enforcement and employment rights enforcement; a "firewall" should be established between these agencies, says the TUC. The significance of this is the context of the Labour Party's overt intent to continue to attack the rights of people deemed "illegal" by virtue of their migration status, taking up where the previous government left off [3]. The point of this separation is to prevent further criminalisation of migrant workers using employment rights enforcement as a smokescreen.

While limited in form and content, the report reflects the need for a new kind of public authority that upholds the rights of working people and has the power to enforce these rights in the face of the general trend towards imposition by employers of worsening conditions of work and pay. Reflecting a growing demand for an active decision-making role in such matters, the five-point plan calls for workers' involvement, albeit reduced to a role for unions in shaping strategies.

Even limited as the TUC plan is, it is clear that it is saying something quite different from the government.

Speaking at the TUC congress, Kier Starmer warned that the previous government left Britain with the infamous "financial black hole" amounting to £22bn this year [4]. While on the one hand, this means that "we must go deep into the marrow of our institutions, rewrite the rules of our economy, fix the foundations," on the other hand, "this government will not risk its mandate for economic stability, under any circumstances. And with tough decisions on the horizon - pay will inevitably be shaped by that."

This is all to say that social programmes including public sector pay will be subject to further austerity, and that the government will take the anti-social offensive further [5].

Rather, then, than standing up for the essence of the TUC's call to defend workers' rights, the Prime Minister instead called for "the politics of partnership" and "compromise". It is not "business versus worker, management versus union, public versus private," he said. "Working people want good companies to make profits," he asserted, to "attract investment and create good jobs."

"The mood is for partnership," he said. "And not just on pay, on everything. To turn around our NHS, give our children the start in life they deserve, make our public services fit for the future, unlock the potential of clean energy. A new era of investment and reform. The common cause of national renewal."

Workers should reject Starmer's "partnership" as a smokescreen for furthering the anti-social offensive. Using this phrase, his ruling faction is deliberately echoing the post-war social democratic arrangement of a tripartite alliance of the government, big business and the large unions that maintained a kind of equilibrium in the decades before the Thatcher government smashed that arrangement. It should also be noted that "investment with reform" is an echo of the Blair days of 2002 and following years. In other words, "reform", meaning restructuring to pay-the-rich, is the priority, before investment in social programmes is forthcoming. The restructuring is to be enforced by the Starmerite "National Wealth Fund". This is the significance of bringing back the former Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney as a member of the National Wealth Fund Taskforce; Michael Barber, Blair's deliverology guru, is also to be brought back as Starmer's adviser on "delivery".

But nowadays, particularly after the experience of Blair, the old illusions of the Labour Party are no longer present in abundance, particularly among younger sections of the working class. Also no longer present in any meaningful sense are the old arrangements of civil society, posing a problem for workers as to how to organise to defend their rights. The fight continues under the banner of Enough is Enough!, while the need for new decision-making forms, for democratic renewal, are on the agenda.

The workers need to have their independent programme and organise for a society based on rights and an economy directed towards meeting the needs of the people, which is the only basis of the alternative. Workers must renew and strengthen their organisations for the challenges of the present and adopt their own outlook and programme to build the workers' opposition to the continuing anti-social offensive.

Notes
1. "Making employment rights work", Tim Sharp, TUC Senior Policy Officer on trade union and employment law, September 8, 2024
https://www.tuc.org.uk/research-analysis/reports/making-employment-rights-work
2. "Condemn Labour Using its New Deal to Bring Workers On Side", Workers' Weekly, June 8, 2024
https://www.rcpbml.org.uk/wwie-24/ww24-13/ww24-13-03.htm
3. "Defend the Rights of Immigrants! Defend the Rights of All!", Workers' Weekly, August 24, 2024
https://www.rcpbml.org.uk/wwie-24/ww24-21/ww24-21-01.htm
4. "Keir Starmer speech at TUC Congress 2024", Labour List, September 2024
https://labourlist.org/2024/09/keir-starmer-tuc-congress-2024-speech-in-full
5.For an analysis of the economic programme, see:
"The Labour Government's Economic Programme", Workers' Weekly, August 11, 2024
https://www.rcpbml.org.uk/wwie-24/ww24-19/ww24-19-03.htm

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