Labour Party collaborates with unions on workplace rights agenda

Labour’s shadow employment secretary Andy McDonald is working with the 12 Labour Party-affiliated unions to develop the party’s agenda on workplace rights and shape a new deal after the coronavirus pandemic, the LabourList website has revealed.

A taskforce has been established under the heading Recover and Rebuild: Power in the Workplace, with representation from all 12 unions. It plans to publish its first report later this year and to feed it into the Labour Party’s policy development process.

The group’s founding statement points out that “the coronavirus pandemic has bought into sharp relief the imbalance of power in the workplace that the Labour and trade union movement have long sought to rectify. It has also highlighted the crucial role that trade unions play in speaking up for their members.”

It adds: “An economy where security and opportunity are available to all can only be achieved when good workplace relations are established underpinned with strong laws and mechanisms that enrich the lives of workers and reward them fairly.”

The taskforce will “set out a shared vision for a new deal for working people which will detail how workers can be collectively and individually empowered to ensure that every worker is entitled to fair pay, job security, dignity at work and work-life-balance, safety at work, and to help Britain recover and rebuild from the virus”.