While highlighting Reform, Tory and LibDem opposition Robert Scott says Labour’s start on employment rights must keep going
Two days’ notice. That is all the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats think working people deserve. If shifts are cancelled, if wages vanish, employers do not owe a penny so long as they give 48 hours warning. This is the Britain we have been left with: jobs that do not pay enough to live on, hours that change at a manager’s whim, livelihoods hanging on a text message. It did not happen by chance. Thatcher started the job, and every Tory government since has treated insecurity as the model.
Labour’s New Deal for Working People is the first serious attempt to change it. Drawn up with trade unions, it says plainly that work should mean stability, not fear. The Employment Rights Bill, introduced in Labour’s first hundred days, is only the start. It brings in protections against fire and rehire, gives workers the right to contracts that reflect the hours they regularly work, delivers family-friendly and flexible working rights from day one, and establishes a new enforcement body to make sure the law is upheld. And, crucially, it strengthens trade unions so working people have a real voice at work.
But one Bill will not be enough. The rest of the New Deal matters just as much. It means ending unpaid internships that lock out working-class young people. It means requiring large employers to publish and act on plans to close the gender pay gap, as well as introducing race and disability pay gap reporting. It means tackling the outsourcing practices that undermine equal pay, delivering the biggest wave of insourcing in a generation and giving workers consultation rights when surveillance technology is introduced at work. It means stronger TUPE protections and updated health and safety standards. Without these commitments, loopholes will remain wide open for bad employers to exploit.
We have already seen who is against it. Reform MPs voted no at every stage. Farage may try to wrap himself in the language of ordinary people, but when it came to jobs and wages, he lined up with the bosses every time. The Conservatives tried to tear chunks out of the Bill in the Lords by stripping out day-one rights, watering down guaranteed hours into a flimsy right to request, and the Liberal Democrats joined them, siding with insecurity instead of workers. Three parties, one position: they all tried to undermine stronger rights for working people.
Business knows the status quo does not work. Research from IPPR shows most employers support stronger rights when the case is made. Secure jobs mean less turnover, better health and higher productivity. In fact, three-quarters of businesses back the New Deal’s direction.
And it is not just business. Polling from the TUC and Hope Not Hate, based on over 21,000 people across every constituency across the UK, shows overwhelming public support. More than seven in ten voters back ending zero-hours contracts. Three in four support statutory sick pay and protection from unfair dismissal from day one. The same share want easier access to flexible working. Crucially, that support cuts across party lines, including Conservative and Reform voters.
Insecure work is not an accident; it is a tool of control. Low pay and unpredictable hours keep people too stretched to organise and too worried to resist. For decades, governments have allowed this to become the norm. The New Deal threatens that settlement, which is why its enemies fight so hard to delay and dilute it.
The New Deal is more than a reform package. It is a test. A test of whether politics can be rebuilt around working people. And a test of whether Reform’s posturing can be punctured by pointing to the truth: when it came to wages, rights and dignity at work, they voted against every single one. It shows that this Labour government is serious about change and ready to deliver the bold reforms our movement is known for.
With important devolved and local elections next year and challenges from both the left and right, the New Deal is how Labour shows it is still the party of working people and still capable of delivering for them.
A half-finished New Deal will not do. Delivered in full, it will shift power back towards the people who keep the country running, making work secure, fair and dignified. The question now is whether our politics finally serve working people or continues to prop up a broken model that has failed them for decades.