Labour movement history in Britain shows workers secured reforms through collective pressure and political representation, rather than being gifted from above, writes KEITH FLETT
The coronavirus emergency has brought about a new understanding of the essential role retail workers have in keeping our communities fed, healthy and safe. Usdaw’s consistent calls for shopworkers to be respected and valued are being heard, but that must not fade into the background when this national crisis passes.
There must be lasting and fundamental changes to the way society views our lowest paid workers. We need a New Deal for the workers employed in our supermarkets, distribution warehouses, food processing sites and home delivery operations. A new deal on pay, a real living wage, an end to insecure employment and action to ensure that retail jobs are no longer underpaid and undervalued.
#SolidarityWithShopworkers is not just a phrase for a crisis and the issues our members face are not new, but amplified in this emergency situation. Their key worker status has brought with it very welcome public applause and government recognition.
Artists should not be consigned to a life of precarious working – they deserve dignity and proper workers’ rights, argues ZITA HOLBOURNE
Labour must not allow unelected members of the upper house to erode a single provision of the Employment Rights Bill, argues ANDY MCDONALD MP
Incoming Usdaw general secretary JOANNE THOMAS talks to Ben Chacko about workers’ rights, Labour and how to arrest the decline of the high street


