Workers Rights

Workers Rights

End the Erosion of Rights of Workers

SEPARATE MINISTRY – Department of Work.

• Create separate Department of Work. 


WORKERS PAY 

  • An immediate above-inflation pay rise for workers to restore wages after over a decade of pay freezes and below-inflation rises.

  • Regular pay increases for all, 
    linked to trade-union agreed measures of inflation.

TRADE UNION RIGHTS 

• Repeal Trade Union Act. 

• Sectoral collective pay and workers’ rights bargaining through your trade union. 

• Guarantee trade unions a right to access to workplaces, so you can talk to your union rep and they can recruit potential new union members from the opted out. 

• Only award government and council contracts to private firms that recognise trade unions. 

• Law to permit secure online and workplace balloting for industrial action votes and internal union elections. But ensuring postal balloting is available for all who want them. 

• Make workers in Britain the same cost to bosses as in any other rich country, to be made redundant.


TRADE UNION MEMBERSHIP AUTOMATIC 

• Automatic trade union membership, whether citizen or not.  

Works Hours

  • 4 day working week, 28 hours week, same pay as was 5 day. 

  • 6 hour full-time working day (plus 1 hour unpaid lunch break after first 3 hours of work), same pay as was 8 hour day. Concessionary tea breaks paid. Helps get more jobs.

• Equal rights from first day of work, whether full or part time, temporary or permanent. 

• Ban Zero-hour contracts. 

• Make regular contract for all hours worked, for workers on short hours contracts (but who regularly work far more hours) after working in that job for 12 weeks. Helps get more employment. 

• Overtime from 7 hours to 11 hours, not more, in a working day. Following day a rest day. 

• Pregnant ladies and people aged over 50 not to do shifts nor night working. 

• Flexible working becomes norm, ie work start 8am, 9am or 10am and end of work day between 3pm, 4pm and 5pm, to help in school run and elder / disabled family care.


APPRENTICESHIPS 

  • Minimum wage of £16 per hour, from age 16 includes those on Apprenticeships. 

  • Increase apprenticeship levy to 5 per cent and doubling the allowance for small firms.
     
  • To improve retention, firms to pay first two years of former apprentices' wages from the levy funds, if take on apprenticeship as permanent employee. 

  • All qualifying apprenticeships to be listed on the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) website. 

  • Application made easier, by UCAS design application and interview system. 

  • £1,000 relocation grant to school leavers who need to relocate for their apprenticeship training. 

  • End practice of private companies setting standards for apprenticeships. 

  • Apprenticeships standards set by colleges and universities. 
 

WORKING WEEK & SHIFTS 

From Living Hours campaign of
UK Living Wage Foundation 2022:

  • A least 4 weeks’ notice of shift changes, with guaranteed payment if shifts are cancelled within this notice period. 

  • The right to a contract that reflects accurate hours worked.

  • A guaranteed minimum of 16 hours a week.

Policies Continue after the below links.

Click on below images (not text below images) to go to pages for more detail:

Workers Rights & Pay

MINIMUM WAGE INCREASE 

  • Raise Minimum Wage to £16 per hour from age 16 upwards. 
      • Affordable as boss's National Insurance contributions reduced to 10 per cent from 13.8 per cent, by Over 50s & Young Labouring Ages party government. 

  • 22 per cent wage rise for nurses and junior doctors. 


SICKNESS ABSENCE 

  • End of Bradford Score about sick absence, as this especially discriminates against women needing long time off work to recover from surgery or suffer prolapse. 

  • Unlimited paid sick / disability leave, til full works pension payment age at 50. 

  • Statutory Sick Pay from first £1 of wages, to real living wage of £16 per hour. 

  • Statutory Sick Pay on worker's wage. 

PAID ANNUAL LEAVE 

  • Mandatory minimum of 4 weeks paid annual leave. 

Protect Workers from Harassment 

 Reinstate protection against third party harassment for workers.

• Provide protective glass shields for staff who sell age-related sales or ticketing arrangements, to protect from abuse.  


EQUAL PAY 

• Men and women to be paid the same, with gender pay auditing transparency. 

• UK abide by global worker standards of the International Labour Organisation conventions. 


NO PAY CAP FOR PUBLIC SECTOR WORKERS 

  • End Public Sector Pay Cap. 

  • Give junior doctors and nurses 22 per cent pay rise. 


MATERNITY RIGHTS
  • Strengthen protection for women against unfair redundancy, as have right to 12 months maternity pay / leave. 

EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNALS 

  • Free employment tribunals and appeals, so full access to justice. 

  • Include right in free employment tribunals to take boss to tribunal for Ageist sexism (misogyny) in combination, for women over age 50. 



PRIVATE EQUITY FIRMS DESTROYING JOBS 

  • Forbid private equity firms buying up shops and shutting them down, losing shop-worker jobs and physical shops on the high street. 

  • Rent cap and forbid change of use of shops, to homes, on high street. 

REST DAY DOUBLE PAY RATE 

  • Protect Sunday rest day off .
     
  • Paid double time, unless type of job requiring 24/7 coverage like NHS. 

MORE BANK HOLIDAYS 

More national patron saints’ day Bank Holidays, granting double pay: 

- St David’s Day, Wales. (1 March) 
- St Andrew’s Day, Scotland (30 November). 
- St Ninians Day (16 September) The Shetland.
- St Magnus Day (16 April), The Orkneys. 
- St Patrick’s Day (northern Ireland / Ulster) (March 17, can vary).  
- St Piran, Cornwall (5 March) 
- St George’s Day (April 23) (England) and 
- original England’s patron saint, St Edmund (20 November) in England. 
Especially as St Edmund is the patron saint of pandemics. 
- Black Country Day 14 July. 
- 12 July, celebrates England as a whole being created under King Athelstan. 

UK-WIDE BANK HOLIDAY 

- 1 August, Emancipation Day -
celebrating August 1, 1834, passage of the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. 



NATIONAL INSURANCE FUND AND REDUNDANCY 

  • Redundancy for workers of private firms that go bankrupt, to come from assets of the company, as first priority before all others the company owes money to, and not from National Insurance Fund.

BACKGROUND 
..."At present, there are three separate employment statuses entitling workers to differing levels of rights and protections.

  • First, there are ‘employees’, who have the most rights.
    They are entitled to (amongst other things): 
  • parental, maternity, paternity and adoption leave and pay;
  • parental bereavement leave and pay; 
  • redundancy pay and 
  • the right to claim unfair dismissal after two years’ continuous employment; and 
  • the right to request flexible working after twenty-six weeks.
  • Employees have a traditional working relationship, with a contract, regular hours or shifts, and a guaranteed wage.

Second, there are ‘limb (b) workers.’ 
People in this category are entitled to basic rights, such as
  • rest breaks, 
  • holiday pay and 
  • the National Minimum Wage, 
  • as well as a few more limited versions of the rights employees enjoy. 
  • They exist in the space of the modern economy that’s often described as ‘casualised,’ which is common across the retail and service sectors and 
  • includes zero-hours contract workers, in which there is no guarantee of regular hours or pay. 
Third, there are the self-employed, who have no workers’ rights. However, in recent decades, this status has been abused by unscrupulous gig economy employers such as Amazon and Uber – and even those in the construction sector itself – through a process known as bogus self-employment. 

Under these conditions, people who should be classified as employees or limb (b) workers are instead classed as
self-employed in order to strip them of their entitlements to statutory sick pay (SSP), the National Minimum Wage, holiday pay and other rights. 

These are the most exploited, insecure and poorly-paid workers in the country – and it turns entire sectors of the economy into a Wild West for workers’ rights.

Related Policies (no links to separate page)

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