Unite may be Labour’s biggest affiliate, but our job first and foremost is to defend workers. I make no apology for holding Labour’s feet to the fire on workers’ rights – no matter how uncomfortable it might make some or what criticism is laid at my door.
Of course I want a Labour government, but that doesn’t mean I will sit on the sidelines and applaud while it caves in to the business lobby and rows back on its commitments. The Labour leadership’s penchant for reneging on promises has been a theme of its time in opposition.
The new deal for working people – first proposed in 2021 – was a good start, with promises to ban fire and rehire and zero-hours contracts and end the qualifying period for basic rights at work. But holes remained: there was still no detailed plan for the expansion of collective bargaining, which is the only tried and tested method of redistributing profits to workers.
Nevertheless, it was a strong base. But instead of building on it, the Labour party decided to unwind many of its commitments. During the national policy forum consultations where these were discussed, Unite was the only affiliate to not vote for the “new” document that day.
Reading the words on the page, it was clear to me that there were rowbacks on individual rights, including zero-hours contracts, where Labour has ultimately changed its policy from an outright ban to workers now having a theoretical right to a contract with regular hours.
But it was the tightening of the noose around the neck of new, straightforward rights to organise for trade unions that presented the clearest indication of change to me, a bureaucratic web impeding the right for a union to access a workplace in order to organise it. The corporate lobbyists were unsurprisingly gaining a foothold. The third and fourth editions of the new deal have led us down a similar path.
The imbalance in power in the workplace is borne out by two facts. First, weekly median pay for full-time workers in Britain is lower in real terms now than before Labour was elected in 1997. Second, the profit margins of the average British business have increased by 30% since before the pandemic.
Is Labour going to change in any serious way the balance of forces? I am increasingly sceptical. The rowbacks on specific issues, such as moving away from a total ban on fire and rehire, signal the direction of travel. For further evidence, look at the planned introduction of sectoral bargaining, which is now on life support.
Limited to one sector and lacking any sort of clarity as to whether actual negotiations on issues such as pay will take place, this important policy will without doubt be watered down still further as part of the much-trumpeted “consultation”. If collective bargaining is not restored to a respectable level, the new deal will not deliver real change for workers where it matters, in their pockets.
If there is an irony to this point, it is this. Both parties talk about delivering high growth, as if it were the only solution to all our ills. Well, collective bargaining is one way to help deliver this. In a report commissioned by Unite, the economists Özlem Onaran, Alexander Guschanski and Thomas Rabensteiner found that restoring collective bargaining coverage to the same levels as 1996 would lead to a 2.8% rise in GDP.
But of course, this solution is ignored. Why? Because any actual advance of the right to bargain would be viewed as a direct challenge to British capital. Power in this country is increasingly held by business elites and their acolytes in Westminster. It is they who frame the debate behind closed doors. Not workers, trade unions, or anybody else for that matter. There is no serious alternative to the status quo being considered. This in a country where a fifth of food bank users are in working households.
In a two-party state with an antiquated voting system, it can appear that we are trapped. There is no alternative, we are told. Beg the rich for scraps – don’t tax them. Bang pots for the workers – don’t pay them. But there is an alternative. We don’t need to be stuck with artificial fiscal rules. Other choices can be made. We can choose to invest, not cut; to tax wealth and to re-fund our NHS. We will begin to map out the possibilities as part of Unite’s workers’ manifesto.
There are some who think not commenting during elections will bring dividends afterwards. I don’t think there is any evidence to support that. It is easy sometimes to overstate the power of being “allowed in the room” and easier still to sing to the choir when the stakes are low. But if we are to deliver different outcomes, not just crumbs from the Labour table, then we will need a different strategy. Now is the time to stand up and say what we believe is required to deliver real change.
If there is any lesson from the shifting sands of the faction wars within Labour, it is this. It will be up to those of us outside parliament to build for tomorrow. We have no choice other than to move the Overton window ourselves. We can’t wait for a hero to arrive or engage in futile personality politics.
Britain needs a pay rise. But if anyone is going to “make work pay” then they are going to have to do more than mouth the words. So yes, vote Labour. But do it with your eyes wide open and don’t be afraid to push for more from a party built to be the workers’ voice.
Sharon Graham is the general secretary of Unite
