News • Good Food Trade Campaign
Trades unions express concern over workers rights in the EU Withdrawal Bill
The Trades Union Congress (TUC) is concerned the EU Withdrawal Bill will not provide any effective protection for workers’ rights. Instead it would provide UK Ministers “with wide-ranging powers to repeal, dilute or limit hard-won employment rights”.
The government has promised that employment rights from the EU will be protected and even enhanced after Brexit. Such claims are being challenged by trades unions, as summarised in a briefing from the Trades Union Congress (TUC), the UK’s alliance of trades unions representing some six million people.
The TUC includes two of the biggest in the UK who are also members of the Sustain alliance, Unite (representing agriculture and food workers) and Unison (representing public sector workers, including those working in food).
As the UK prepares to leave the European Union, trades unions are determined that workers’ rights, jobs and livelihoods must be protected. As a TUC briefing paper explains, “Working people and our communities should not pay a price for Brexit. Central to these aims is the need to protect all the workplace rights which have been hard won by workers and their unions through our membership of the EU.”
Such rights include equality laws protecting women, black and minority ethnic people, LGBT+ and disabled workers from discrimination at work; rights to time off for working parents; holiday pay and protections from excessive working hours; equal treatment rights for part-time, fixed term and agency workers; information and consultation rights and health and safety standards.
The TUC is concerned the EU Withdrawal Bill will not provide any effective protection for workers’ rights. Instead it would provide UK Ministers “with wide-ranging powers to repeal, dilute or limit hard-won employment rights”.
The public sector union UNISON, a member of Sustain, has also published an EU Withdrawal Bill briefing for the House of Lords, encouraging Bill amendments that would – among other measures – secure the scrutiny and limit the scope of delegated powers; and promote powers to amend UK law to ensure compliance with international obligations, including those relating to workers’ rights and protections.
Read the TUC briefing paper on the EU Withdrawal Bill.
Read the UNISON briefing paper on the EU Withdrawal Bill.
Published Thursday 19 April 2018
Good Food Trade Campaign: Campaigning for good trade that benefits people and the planet at home and overseas.
