Weakening workers’ rights in the EU is playing with fire, warns TUC

3 June 2015

Weakening workers’ rights will not win votes to stay in the EU, says the TUC today (Wednesday).

TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady will spell out a strong message on the EU referendum as she delivers the inaugural Ken Coates Memorial Lecture at the University of Nottingham. In her speech, Frances O’Grady says:

“Since before the crash, the EU, along with the IMF and European Bank, has pursued an agenda of austerity, liberalisation and deregulation - including taking a sledge hammer to collective bargaining in the programme countries. So the political class should not be surprised if workers around Europe start to wonder - what's in it for them?

“Never ones to miss an opportunity, some business leaders are lobbying to get workers' rights - particularly those for agency workers and on working time, together with a moratorium on any new rights - thrown into the reform package.

“We can all agree that Europe must create more jobs. European trade unions want a much more ambitious investment programme for skilled, sustainable, well-paid jobs than is currently on offer. But you don’t get that through deregulation or slamming the brakes on rights at work.

“Europe must become a good jobs factory. Without workers' rights it would become a sweatshop.

“The government is playing with fire. They will not win blue collar votes to stay in the EU by weakening workers’ rights.”

NOTES TO EDITORS:

- The Ken Coates Memorial Lecture takes place at 6.30pm on Wednesday 3 June at the University of Nottingham. More information is available at: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/cssgj/events/2015/ken-coates-memorial-lecture.aspx

- All TUC press releases can be found at www.tuc.org.uk
- Follow the TUC on Twitter: @tucnews

Contacts:

Media enquiries:

Clare Santry  T: 020 7467 1372  M: 07717 531150  E: csantry@tuc.org.uk
Alex Rossiter  T: 020 7467 1285  M: 07887 572130  E: arossiter@tuc.org.uk
Tim Nichols  T: 020 7467 1337  M: 07876 452902  E: tnichols@tuc.org.uk
Kay Atwal  T: 020 7467 1385  M: 07941 547469  E: katwal@tuc.org.uk