We need a Labour Party that’s tough on low wages, tough on the causes of low wages

Last month I was negotiating with some of the biggest and most profitable food companies on the planet, attempting to negotiate a living wage for their workers, many of whom can’t afford to buy the food they’re producing. This weekend I’m in Birmingham at the National Party Forum, where the task should be a little more optimistic; what do we need to do to ensure we elect not just a Labour government, but one that makes a genuine difference to people so desperate for change?

I’ll arrive there with the grotesque inequalities scarring our nation fresh in my mind, questioning how a retail boss can luxuriate in wages hundreds of times greater than his shop floor workers yet can, without sanction, rely on the state to top up his poverty wages.

I’ll be asking when Britain became the sort of nation where men and women must desperately knit together a working week out of a few hours here, another few hours there, with minimal protections, while employers are allowed to hire and fire workers at will. A nation where food banks turn people away because they cannot meet demands.

Left unchallenged, these inequalities will set us back generations.  We cannot build a prosperous, fairer society while such iniquities flourish.

So tackling these issues must be a priority of the next Labour government.  In fact, making clear it is a priority will set us on the road to re-election.

This is where trade unions come in; it’s significant that while mass party membership is at an all time low, trade union membership is growing for the first time since 1992, with women a major part of that growth.

Unions represent more than six million men and women in this country, more than any other civil society organisation and certainly far more than the membership of the main political parties combined.

Our values – of dignity, fairness, the common good – are values of the people of this country.

Take the NHS.  Unite, together with Unison and the GMB, has just called a national demo on 5th July to protect our health service.  This is not because we are fond of marching.  For Unite, still a largely private sector union, it is because nearly forty percent of our members tell us that they want action to save it.

Or low wages.  Worrying numbers of people in work depend on welfare top ups or pay day lenders to get by. They are worried sick about their children. As one member told me `it is like slavery out there – my daughter earns less today than I did twenty years ago’.

Last weekend we polled our members on living with austerity.  Thousands responded.  As the G8 were taking off their ties in Enniskillen, forty percent of responding Unite members were telling us that wages and income were their priority; an additional thirty percent asked `where are the jobs coming from?’

But if we as a party are serious about being tough on low wages, then we must be tough on the causes of low wages.

It is no coincidence, since the 1970s when employers, abetted by governments, began their attacks on collective bargaining, the wealth created by workers moved from wage packets to boardroom bonuses.  Today, less than one in five workers is covered by collective bargaining agreements.  Unless this changes, commonly-created wealth will continue to seep into private hands.

If you don’t believe this is a problem, walk down your local high street.  Far from the `green shoots’ of government claims, you’ll see money lenders and pound shops.

People need money in their pockets, job security, affordable homes – they see right through Osborne’s economic policies, they know they won’t deliver these.

Too often I am asked by members `what will Labour do that is different?’  I want to say that Labour will be the party of investment, not cuts, to stimulate job creation and sustainable growth in a robust, re-balanced and fairer economy. That we’ll have a legal framework to encourage greater collective bargaining and stronger trade unions to deliver the living wage, close agency loopholes and end the other workplace injustices that Ed Miliband described so eloquently in his recent speech. That we’ll be a party with a comprehensive and universal system of public services and social security so everyone can participate in society

A party of the common good, not private power, with the vision and courage needed to repair our nations.

As union members we don’t inhabit another world.  We are of and live in everyday Britain.  Here, it is patently obvious to people that political decisions affect their lives – it is just that they increasingly despair about the ability of politicians of any shade to help improve their lives.

We need to change this.  We need to give them hope in Labour.

Jennie Formby is Director of the Political Department at Unite and a member of Labour’s NEC