Chancellor George Osborne’s plan for workers to sell off
their employment rights, making it easier and cheaper for bosses to sack people,
might well have produced a tough reaction from a trade union leadership
prepared to confront the despised ConDems.
The proposals are to be rushed through parliament to come
into effect next April. Dressed up as a voluntary scheme, it is almost certain
to be compulsory for new employees, however.
They will have to sign a contract that abandons hard-fought
for rights on redundancy pay, unfair dismissal and maternity leave. In exchange
for a few shares of dubious value, workers will also give up rights to training
and flexible working.
At a stroke, these laws will create a modern form of bonded
labour to satisfy some mad Tory dogma as well the deeply reactionary people who
constitute the party conference delegates assembled in Birmingham .
With the TUC threatening all sorts of action some time next
year over public sector pay, here was a golden opportunity to ratchet up the
rhetoric at least. But over at Congress House, home of the Trades Union
Congress, there was not so much fire in the belly as a
dose of post-lunch sleepiness.
Outgoing general secretary Brendan Barber restricted himself
to “deploring” the plans, adding that “these complex proposals do not look as
if they will have very much impact as few small businesses will want to tie
themselves up in the tangle of red tape necessary to trigger these exemptions”.
Amazing, Barber claimed that Osborne’s plans were “said for effect” but the TUC
would be “vigilant” just in case they were the thin end of a “future
anti-employee wedge”.
So that’s okay then. No need to get alarmed. Just a keep
watch just in case the Tories turn really nasty! What world is Barber living
in, you may ask? The Tories and the Lib Dem – who hate unions just as much as
their Coalition partners – are whittling away rights at a rapid rate.
Only recently, business secretary Vince Cable – who, as we
know exchanges frequent text messages with Ed Miliband – announced plans to
restrict payouts for employees who win employment tribunal cases, as well as
making it harder for them to make a claim in the first place.
Pension rights for millions of public sector workers have
been eroded, without much resistance from union leaders with one or two notable
exceptions such as Mark Serwotka of the civil servants PCS. Real wages have
been cut by years of pay freezing. But don’t despair, the TUC remains
“vigilant”!
Which makes you wonder about the thinking behind the
TUC-organised October 20 March for a
Future that Works. Taking place safely on a non-working day to avoid any
kind of strike action, it is surely designed to let off steam while letting the
ConDems off the hook.
As the economy continues to deteriorate, with public
finances going from bad to worse according to the International
Monetary Fund today, Osborne and the rest of the cabinet have their backs
to the wall and are extremely vulnerable.
Neither the TUC nor Miliband’s Labour Party have any
intention of rocking the political boat, however. They are prepared to wait it
out to 2015 in the forlorn hope that a change of government will put things
right. With Labour committed to spending cuts and attacks on welfare benefits,
that’s not going to happen.
Yesterday, Osborne cynically used the phrase “workers of the
world unite” when announcing his plan to scrap employment rights, while last
week Miliband invoked the imperialist Tory Disraeli in a speech that over 50
times mentioned the phrase “One Nation”. With the parties virtually
interchangeable, it tells you everything you wanted to know about British
politics and forgot to ask.
Paul Feldman
Communications editor
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