Time for a new deal for our community, our families and our futures at work.
Life is tough for almost everyone in our community at the moment. The price of everything is increasing – from fuel and energy bills to the weekly shop – but incomes are not keeping up.
We were promised a high-wage economy, but the brutal reality is that we’re paying the price for 13 years of Conservative financial mismanagement, with falling and flatlining pay, while work has become increasingly insecure.
Labour’s New Deal for Working People will make Britain work again for working people. It’s a comprehensive plan that will strengthen individual and collective rights, raise wages and improve working conditions. It will be introduced early in Labour’s first term in government.
Labour will ensure all workers, from day one in a job, are entitled to basic rights and protections like sick pay, holiday pay, parental leave, flexible working and protection against unfair dismissal.
Labour will end fire and rehire so workers can be safe in the knowledge that terms and conditions negotiated in good faith can’t be ripped up under threat of dismissal.
Labour will make work more family-friendly, and make it easier to balance work with home, community and family life. It will improve maternity and paternity leave and the shared parental leave system and guarantee paid family and carers’ leave. Flexible working – including remote and hybrid working as well as flexi-hours, term-time hours and family-friendly hours – will be a day-one right for all workers by default.
Labour will ban zero-hours contracts and ensure everyone has the right to regular hours they can rely on and a contract that reflects the number of hours they regularly work, reasonable notice of any changes in shifts and fair compensation for cancelled and curtailed shifts.
Labour will strengthen trade union rights, raising pay and improving conditions. Workplaces where workers are represented by a Trade Union are more likely to provide decent pay, good training, and benefits above the statutory minimum. So Labour will repeal the Trade Union Act and the new anti-strike laws, reverse the decades-long decline in collective bargaining, using Fair Pay Agreements to drive up pay and improve working conditions – starting off with the care sector, which we all know has suffered in every way from chronic underfunding under the Tories.
Labour’s New Deal for Working People will start to create a society where everyone has a fair chance of employment, of fair pay, good conditions, and time to spend with family and in their community.
Clive Harriss, Membership Secretary, Cheltenham Labour Party
This article was first published in the Cheltenham Post on 23rd February 2024