Unions Make Work Pay
More than four million people are in precarious employment. Over one million are employed on zero hours contracts. Millions don’t have access to proper sick pay schemes. Rogue employers like P&O Ferries sacked hundreds of staff on the spot without facing any consequences. Amazon used every dirty trick in the book to stop its workers from organising in a trade union. And wage growth during the Conservative-led government was worse than for any other period since the 1920s.
Working people need change
Unions have been campaigning for years to push the government to deliver higher pay and stronger workers’ rights. And we’re closer than ever to delivering transformative change for working people.
The government is introducing new workers' rights laws through the Employment Rights Bill, which is currently being debated in parliament. The plan to make work pay was developed with unions and would be the biggest upgrade of workers’ rights in a generation.
The government’s Make Work Pay agenda is essential for improving living standards, putting more money into people’s pockets and placing the UK economy on a sustainable footing to growth.
The Employment Rights Bill will help deliver a much-needed economic reset, and a departure from the “low growth, low rights” model which characterised fourteen years of Conservative government.
If delivered in full, the bill is set to benefit over 10 million workers – including many on low incomes. Change can't come soon enough. The plan to make work pay will:
- Ban zero hours contracts
- End fire and rehire
- Strengthen sick pay
- Provide key employment rights from day one of the job
- Give employees a right to flexible working
- End lower minimum wage rates for young people
- Force companies to disclose pay gap between BME and disabled staff and other workers
- Grant unions new rights to organise and win better pay for workers
The business lobby is attacking the plan to make work pay - just like it did 25 years ago, against the National Minimum Wage. We beat them then and we can beat them again.
The low-pay, low-rights employment model of the last 14 years has failed. It’s time for change.
Thank you for your support 👏
With your help we got workers rights to the top of every Labour MPs agenda
We took a case of postcards to Liverpool for Labour Party Conference, each one featuring a personalised message from a constituent.
Hundreds of you took the time to write a few lines to your Labour MP about the government’s plan to make work pay and how it would make a difference to you. During the conference, we hand delivered a postcard to over 100 MPs.
Your words deeply resonated with MPs, sparking dozens of conversations about the significance of the Employment Rights Bill.
And the following week we posted another round of your postcards directly to Parliament, with a total of 251 Labour MPs receiving a personalised message from their constituent about the need for stronger workers’ rights.
Whether it’s about receiving sick pay, banning exploitative zero-hours contracts or having unions in more workplaces, we were able to arm MPs with real life stories about how much their constituents want and need those changes.
Here are just a few of the MPs who received your hand delivered postcards!
