New Labour and rights for part-time and temporary workers
Posted on Friday 7 December, 2007
Filed Under New Labour
New Labour has no more persuasive and literate defender in the mainstream press than Johann Hari. The Boy Wonder – who has now repented of his initial support for the invasion of Iraq – regularly uses his column in the Independent to make the case that however bad Labour social policies look on the surface, closer examination reveals them to be sotto voce social democracy.
Given that I carry a Labour membership card in my wallet, part of me wants to believe that Hari is at least half right. After all, as Tony Blair repeatedly reminded union audiences, this Labour government is still the best Labour government we’ve got, and the political alternative is the return of the Tories.
In his latest piece, Hari maintains that a Conservative win at the next general election would be seriously bad news for several particularly vulnerable groups, including part-time workers:
In 1998, the Labour government signed the European Social Charter. This gives part-time workers a package of basic rights – to parental leave when they have a baby, to proper sick pay, and to not be arbitrarily sacked. Most of the people enjoying these rights are women at the bottom of the pay scale, with nearly 40 per cent of them on the minimum wage.
David Cameron says it is one of his “highest priorities” to pull out of the Charter, and therefore end these rights. The effect? Women working part-time will lose big sums of money after giving birth, or when they are ill. It will be much easier to sack them. Their lives will become more stressful still.
Given the limits of my knowledge of social policy, I’ll accept this argument – and the similar claims Hari advances about the government’s stance on the treatment of drug addicts, sixth formers from poor families and single mothers – as further grounds to prefer the continuation of New Labour in office to the triumph of the Cokehead Conservatism.
But on the same day as Hari’s words were carried in the Indie, the Financial Times reported that New Labour’s take on EU-inspired social measures is not always so enlightened:
Gordon Brown avoided being outvoted on a European Union proposal to give full employment rights to temporary workers.
However, he may have won only a temporary stay of execution – and could be forced to give way on the measure as soon as next year …
Britain was among a handful of member states to oppose the draft directive, which would give temps full pay after six weeks. The planned legislation was not put to a vote at the meeting of European employment ministers in Brussels.
London argues that the law could impose extra costs on employers as well as making work less flexible. British business believes temps should receive full pay after a minimum of six months.
Temps are, of course, every bit as vulnerable and exploited as part-timers. Effectively, they can be hired and fired at will. They are overwhelmingly poorly paid, and my guess is that nowadays most of them will be foreign.
And why should workers who have put in six months in the same job be regarded as ‘temporary’ in any meaningful sense? They are in an entirely different category from, say, agency receptionists standing in for two days a staffer goes sick, or sub-editors putting in a week of day shifts on a magazine to cover holidays.
In seasonal occupations, a six month qualifying period means that many temps would never qualify for full pay, no matter how many years running they worked for the same employer.
If New Labour is still to merit the designation of half-way social democratic, at least on a good day, it needs rapidly to eliminate this anomaly.
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14 Responses to “New Labour and rights for part-time and temporary workers”
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I don’t think we should spend to long on Hari’s version of the old ‘lesser of two evils’ chestnut. New Labour’s policy for dealing with drug addicts may be more ‘enlightened’ than the Tories but that conveniently forgets the fact that New Labour’s neoliberal economic policies, following on from the Tories, are the main reason for the levels of drug addiction and other aocial problems in the first place!
Strangely this issue, of part-time, temporary, and agency workers’ rights, came up at my T & G Branch meeting last Wednesday – brought to our attention by a prominent left-of-centre Labour Councillor. We agreed to write a letter on this to our Labour MP – not that will do bleeding anything about it. And draw it to the attention of what SERTUC and other bodies we can get in contact with.
I wonder if I one detect the dead-hand of the European Chamber of Commerce lobby in the UK stand? This, aka, as the US’s Trojan Horse – hey just as Brown is now known – is at the forefront in opposing all social legislation benefiting workers in the EU.
Completley true Doug,
And on many civil liberties issues the Tories are to the left of Labour now.
I was listening to radio 4 recenetly, and there was someone lashing into New Labour from the left over the extension of holding people without trial, and then it turned out to be David Davies!
What a strange world we live in.
Hari is a talented writer and I enjoy reading his columns. However, I can’t help but feel that in many ways he is quite blinkered by his ideology. I don’t particularly want to see the Tory party in power but keeping Labour in government will do nothing to stem their excesses or curb their degradation.
The longer Labour remain in power the more complacent, corrupt and, worst of all, right-wing they will become. Although at this stage I doubt even a spell in opposition would do much to cure their ills.
A Swansea Blog
Hang on folks, at least we have an audience with a Labour Government – rights for agency workers are a Warwick agreement and a manifesto commitment. We need to stop cutting off our noses and work out how to further this hugely important issue. Or of course we can just do nothing and just post whines and divisive moans about it?
Ummm John have you read the UNISON website today? Our Government just went right back on the Warwick commitment by blocking the Directive. What is UNISON Labour Link doing about that? (What is the Labour Link doing about Karen Reissman, Michael Gavan and Fremantle come to that?) I think the more intelligent people in UNISON’s own leadership now despair of the sheer inadequacy of our Labour Party intervention – do you agree?
A complete, fucking disgrace!
BTW: what have the anti-EU nutters got to say about this?
our Labour MP
Which MP is that?
One of the problems here is the electoral system. It means its even easier for Labour to say “accept this or get the Tories”. That threatening approach, which I’ve heard Tony Blair use so often, is very patronising and insulting in itself, quite apart from what you feel about the particular politics.
If the electoral system was a bit more sophisticated and responsive, rather than being such a hugely blunt instrument, then that would be an improvement. By no means perfect, but an improvement.
You’re lucky to have a labor party. In the US we have nothing.
Hari is right; so are Jon Rogers and Renegade Eye.
There are real and important differences between Labour and the Tories for those at the sharp end.
Since 1997, Labour have made important changes to the lives of a large number of people.
Massively reducing unemployment, establishing a minimum wage(despite it being low and ageist), working family tax credits, free nursery places, pension credits, smaller class sizes in schools, shorter hospital waiting lists, at least the possibility of forcing union recognition on unwilling bosses etc.
Of course there have been bad things done too which have been well documented on the left, but a bit of balance would be welcome.
On John Rogers’s point, yes this backtracking must be resisted. I’m sure he would agree though, that the best way to do that is to challenge the people running Labour Link and try and get Unison fighting within the structures and links that exist between the unions and the Labour Party. This is not an option with a tory government.
This hasn’t been seriously tried yet in any of the big unions. This would be more worthwhile and more sensible than a few hundred or a few thousand people proclaiming themselves *the* party and call on the unions to affiliate to them. People who do so are pretty irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
As a Social Democrat and someone who works in an employment agency, i can safely say that the treatment of temporary workers is undignified to say the least. Employment market ‘flexibility’ is the same rampant ‘liberalisation’ that talks of freedom but offers nothing of the sort to the people who work with its consequences. I have seen people trying to cope with being offered work one day, then told they are not needed the next and then back and forth. How can someone plan for the next week, let alone meet the cost of living i do not know. Flexibility is stacked unsurprisingly with the employers and the big businesses, not with employer.
On the ‘well its better than having the tory’ argument, its a woeful attempt at providing a false choice to Labour members and voters. The problem is the suffocating grip of the FPTP system, which offers no organic space for dissenting voices within the Labour movement to offer social democrats a home. New Labour currently only have to offer a social democracy in comparison to the tories, in wales this is different as Plaid Cymru are offering a genuine centre-left message, albeit with the nationalism i find so backward. Such genuine centre-left opposition to Welsh Labour is produced a more genuine centre-left political climate.
I do not advocate a seperate party per se, but i truly believe that New Labour’s genuine beliefs in social democracy a triangulated away out of the political reality of super marginal seats and 8000 votes.
We must have electoral reform…
“the draft directive, which would give temps full pay after six weeks.”
Not quite the same as ‘full rights to temporary workers’ then. The unions should campaign for full employment rights from day one for all workers. Having recently been forced to fight my own sacking – in Germany you only have employment rights after 6 months – I know from personal experience that it’s a disgrace that one day, or any period of time, can make a difference to whether you have more or less rights at work or not. At the same time, I think there should be restrictions on employment agencies and the misuse of temporary contracts (that are renewed, and renewed, and renewed). It’s bad enough here, I dread to think what the situation is like in Britain.
Hi Jon
Nope, you will be surprised to learn that I do not agree with you! – As far as I am aware it is Warwick agreement to introduce agency rights during this government’s term of office – not 2007. So far the agreement has been very effective. It is bloody disappointing that rights for agency workers were not agreed last week. We need to keep lobbying and arguing and keeping the pressure up.
Actually, over this sort of issue where our bargaining position as trade unionists are practically non-existent that UNISON Labour link (and TULO) really proves their worth.
Discuss.