Britain’s top union leader has written to the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, to warn the government that dropping plans to legislate for tougher employment rights after mass sackings at P&O Ferries would “side with bad bosses”.
Frances O’Grady, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, said the UK needed urgent “proper legislation” through an employment bill promised by ministers more than two years ago but repeatedly delayed.
It emerged over the weekend that the government would leave the long-awaited reforms out of the Queen’s speech in May, when the government lays out its plans for the coming parliamentary session. It first promised an employment bill in December 2019 after Boris Johnson’s general election victory, claimed as a way to improve UK workers’ rights after Brexit.
O’Grady said a failure to bring forward the plan would give a “green light to rogue employers to treat staff like disposable labour”, particularly after critics said P&O Ferries had exposed the government’s weak position to tackle abuses.
The Dubai-owned ferry operator provoked outrage across the political spectrum last month by sacking nearly 800 workers without the consultations required by law, and then admitting that it had done so deliberately. The firm is facing criminal and civil investigations.
“There is no excuse for delay,” said O’Grady. “If the government breaks its promise to enhance workers’ rights, working people will have been conned and betrayed.
“Without new laws to protect people at work there is nothing stopping P&O-type scandals from happening again in the future.”
Officials in the Cabinet Office have stopped working on the bill, meaning it is unlikely to make the speech, the Financial Times reported last week, citing three unnamed officials. A government source said the contents of the Queen’s speech had not yet been agreed upon.
The bill would have introduced protections against pregnancy discrimination, and the creation of a single enforcement body for employment rights to ensure that abuses do not fall in the gaps between different regulators, as well making the right to flexible working patterns the default option unless employers have a good reason not to.
A government spokesman said: “We are committed to building a high-skilled, high-productivity, high-wage economy that delivers on our ambition to make the UK the best place in the world to work.
“This includes ensuring workers’ rights are robustly protected while also fostering a dynamic and flexible labour market.”
