Labour launches workplace manifesto

Labour’s major announcement today has been on zero hours contracts – but that shouldn’t obscure the unveiling of a much broader set of policies (of which the zero hours contract crackdown was only one) as part of a “workplace manifesto”. The other key policies in the document (which have largely been announced over the past few years, but which are now collated into a single offer for working people) are:

• Raising the National Minimum Wage to more than £8
• Scrapping the Government’s ‘shares-for-rights’ scheme
• Making it illegal to use agency workers to undercut wages of permanent employees
• Banning recruitment agencies from hiring only from overseas
• Creating thousands of new apprenticeships – guaranteeing an apprenticeship for all school-leavers who get the grades
• Free childcare for working parents and doubling paternity leave to four weeks
• Abolishing the Government’s employment tribunal fee system

The manifesto has been welcomed by the trade union movement. With GMB General Secretary Paul Kenny saying it “will be welcomed by the tens of thousands of people for whom the world of work is a daily lottery”. It was also given the crucial backing of the Scottish TUC, who said “Labour has made clear in its Work Manifesto that there are very clear dividing lines between it and the Tories on the key issues affecting working people in Scotland”.