Skip to main content
Unions will resist attack on workers’ rights

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.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
Anti-racists demonstrate in Glasgow last Saturday
Voices of Scotland / 15 June 2026
15 June 2026

Trade unions, trades councils and community organisations must work together to build lasting solidarity and resistance to the far right, argues DREW GILCHRIST

Rise
Features / 16 August 2025
16 August 2025

LAURA PIDCOCK and PAUL O’CONNELL introduces Rise, a political platform for working-class activism

NHS workers on the picket line outside St Thomas' Hospital, London, ahead of a march from the hospital to Trafalgar Square, May 1, 2023
Features / 19 July 2025
19 July 2025

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

Junior doctors on the picket line outside St Thomas' Hospital, London, during their continuing dispute over pay. Picture date: Thursday June 27, 2024
Workers' Rights / 18 July 2025
18 July 2025

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