AFTER having the pleasure of working for nearly 10 years at the Institute of Employment Rights (IER), I’m absolutely thrilled to have recently taken up the position of director.

I’m excited to be working with our network of academics, labour lawyers and trade unionists to continue to provide information, critical analysis and policy ideas to assist the labour movement for the struggles ahead.

Since the July general election, Britain’s labour movement is still finding its feet in a new industrial landscape. The New Deal for Workers (NDFW), or “Making Work Pay” as the Labour Party has more recently branded it, seems like it will deliver meaningful changes for workers, and this should be welcomed.

As an independent trade union movement, we should also maintain a healthy dose of scepticism though, as many in our movement will remember manoeuvrings under the previous Labour government — where many excellent labour law policies were either ditched or watered down beyond recognition at the last minute. We need to ensure that this doesn’t happen now and that workers get their desperately needed rights improved in earnest.

It was recently announced by the Department for Business and Trade that the government is going to remove the pernicious Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 from the statute books via its Employment Bill.

We are proud of our role in informing the debate around why the Strikes Act was so dystopian for workers and their trade unions. The role our sister organisation played in this  — the Campaign for Trade Union Freedom — cannot be understated, and it continues to dynamically campaign to have all anti-union legislation removed from the statute books and replaced with positive labour rights.

Many of you will know that the ideas which evolved into the NDFW originated from the IER’s Manifesto for Labour Law published in 2016. We are keen therefore to ensure that these ideas are implemented effectively, so that they deliver the best possible outcomes for workers. To this end, IER will be monitoring and commenting on this area of policy developments.

The Employment Bill is expected to be brought before Parliament around the second week in October. IER will be highlighting what is likely to be in the Bill and why its content could be so transformative for Britain’s 33 million workers.

But we will also be commenting on possible omissions and arguing for their inclusion. This will be the theme at this year’s IER TUC exhibition as well as our fringe meeting (Sunday September 8 at 6pm, the Brighton i360) — “What Labour’s Employment Rights Bill needs to include.” Our fringe will be followed by another fantastic GFTU social, which I highly recommend you attend.

After the Employment Bill is published, our experts will be analysing its content, as well as any intended or unintended consequences.

We plan to respond to relevant public consultations and produce briefings for use by the labour movement to help build pressure and to best inform the work of parliamentarians willing to improve labour rights for workers.

In terms of the other work at the IER, I’m keen to retain what we are already doing so well, continuing our 35-year record of excellent work and maintaining our reputation as a reliable source of information on labour law and well-researched policy ideas.

That being said, I’m also looking forward to updating some of our information outputs in order to reach wider audiences.

I want to continue our excellent relationship with the Morning Star. As readers, you will know how crucial the paper’s daily industrial reporting is to our movement. I’d also like to grow IER’s mass media presence as far as possible, as well as develop our new social media channels, and maybe even get a podcast off the ground as a means of our expert analysis reaching new audiences.

Growing the IER’s expert network is also a key feature of what I’d like to achieve, to better prepare us for the future. As part of this, we are forming an IER research panel in September, which will consist of interested academics and union policy officers.

One group in particular I would like to reconnect with is our links with progressive economists, as this will be crucial in informing our future work if we are to show the real-world economic effects of existing and proposed labour law reforms.

The staffing profile has always been modest at IER, but we have always punched well above our weight due to our dedicated, hardworking staff. We have many interesting projects in the pipeline coming up over the next year.

If we want to grow and undertake larger projects to continue to inform the labour movement, we will need the staffing profile to do so. My plan is to advertise for a project assistant appointment later this year, to help us look for new project opportunities and to ensure they continue to be delivered to a high standard.

So do keep an eye out for anyone who might be a good fit for this role, and tell them to sign up to our weekly newsletter at www.ier.org.uk to hear about the vacancy.

Being the new director, I’m very aware that these are big shoes to fill, but I’m looking forward to the challenge, doing what needs to be done, and working with our team and the wider movement to deliver for workers.

James Harrison is the director of IER and can be contacted at james@ier.org.uk.