UNIONS should launch a national campaign to strengthen the Employment Rights Bill backed by potential industrial action, the bakers’ union moved at its annual conference yesterday.

The Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU) vowed to raise the issue at the TUC as it passed a motion demanding that amendments to the Bill should be discussed at a special congress.

These should include the immediate repeal of all Tory anti-union legislation, a £15 per hour minimum wage with no age exemptions and collective bargaining for all workers, said delegates.

The total abolishing of fire-and-rehire and zero-hours contracts should also be included, alongside opposition to any austerity measures proposed by the Labour government, the union said.

Cornwall delegate Robbie Woodland said that most of the improvements set out by the Bill are to individual worker rights rather than collective ones.

“A key part of this is leaving most of the Tory anti-union laws intact, including the right for workers and unions to solidarity action,” he said.

“There is also insufficient strengthening of collective bargaining, a key element in improving workers’ rights after decades of erosion under successive trash governments.”

The motion says the Bill also leaves loopholes around fire-and-rehire and zero-hours contracts and calls for fast-track legislation to abolish industrial action ballot thresholds to be tabled in Parliament separately to the Bill.

In March, dozens of key trade unionists expressed their “dismay” at the government announcing that the 50 per cent turnout thresholds introduced by the 2016 Trade Union Act will remain in place until after it has conducted a review into electronic balloting.

GMB’s annual congress called for the repeal of the ban on union members taking strike action in solidarity with others earlier this month.