WE LAUNCHED Usdaw’s New Deal for Workers Campaign during the pandemic, at a time when the incredible contributions of our members really came to the fore.
The campaign reflects the widespread recognition that key workers deserve not just public gratitude, but a fair deal at work — a deal where everyone is properly paid and rewarded for their work and protected from unscrupulous employment practices.
In the years since the pandemic, it has become even clearer that we cannot trust the Tories to deliver the change working people need. After 14 years in power, they have run out of road.
Through their longstanding refusal to take action to strengthen employment rights and tackle one-sided flexibility, they have failed to protect people from the cost-of-living crisis that they created.
The impact their failures have had on Usdaw members is clear from the responses to our latest cost-of-living survey which found that a staggering 81.5 per cent of members say they feel worse off now than they did 12 months ago, higher than 77 per cent in 2022 and 39 per cent in 2021; 76 per cent are not able to afford to take sick leave, 61 per cent identify getting ill as a key concern, and 70 per cent say their children are missing out.
These figures, and the stories we hear every day from our members, show that we need urgent change. We need a general election and a Labour government.
The Labour Party was created by the trade union movement and has a strong track record of delivering substantial achievements for working people. Many basic working rights exist because trade unions fought for them and a Labour government delivered them. Sometimes it feels that Labour’s many achievements have been forgotten about, or are now simply taken for granted.
In contrast, over their 14 years of government, the Tories have failed working people. They commissioned the Taylor Review into Modern Employment Practices, then failed to implement many of its recommendations. They promised greater employment rights in their 2019 manifesto and failed to make good on their promises. Then they promised an Employment Bill on more than 20 occasions which they never delivered.
After being elected in 2010, the Conservative-led government launched a serious attack on workers’ rights. This included making it easier to unfairly dismiss workers, weakening protections against redundancy and removing some protections during a business transfer. Since first coming to power, the Conservatives have overseen a 700 per cent increase in the number of zero-hours contracts.
The Tory Trade Union Act 2016 brought in the most restrictive anti-union laws ever seen in Britain. Strike action and recognition ballots are now even more restricted than they were during the Thatcher years.
