Labour conference votes for no U-turns on workers’ rights reforms

Conference has passed a motion affirming that there will be “no regression” from Labour’s New Deal for Working People, as well as motions on tackling violence against women and girls and restoring “trust” in the UK’s political system.

Delegates also approved two motions from women’s conference, one of which also covered violence against women and girls and a second on equal pay, which called on the party to “build on Barbara Castle’s legacy and eliminate the injustice of pay discrimination”.

Violence against women and girls – composite motion eight – was passed on a show of hands. The motion, moved by Cheadle CLP, states that tackling violence against women and girls must be a “coordinated effort across government” to ensure Labour can deliver on its mission in government to halve levels of VAWG.

The motion calls on Labour to review sentencing for domestic abuse, ensure domestic abuse survivors can access the support, including financial support, they need quickly and ensure a “comprehensive reform” of the private family law system.

It urges the party to introduce a guideline minimum sentence of seven years for rape, roll out specialist rape courts, review the use of the Sexual Harm Prevention Order for sexually motivated violence and introduce new custodial sentences for those who name victims of rape and sexual assault.

The motion also calls on the party to introduce a “survivor support package” to improve victims’ experience in the courts, establish a specific new criminal offence for spiking and end the “promotion” of harmful content online.

It additionally demands that the party “overhaul” the police standards system, ensure there is a specialist rape and serious sexual offence unit within each police force in England and Wales and set “accountable standards” for the way victims of sexual abuse and violence are treated.

Ethics and standards in politics – composite motion nine – was also carried on a show of hands. The motion, put forward by Halton CLP, states that the next Labour government must “stamp out” corruption in government, strengthen the rules and ensure they are enforced in order “to restore trust in our political system”.

It states that Labour will establish a new independent integrity and ethics commission, with the power to investigate misconduct and breaches of the ministerial code, including access to any evidence it needs, and make it mandatory for former ministers to apply to the commission before accepting any job.

It adds that Labour will ban second jobs for MPs, “with only very limited exemptions”, and ban former ministers from lobbying, consultancy or any paid work related to their former job for at least five years.

Challenges facing retail and the high street – composite motion ten – was carried on a show of hands. The motion, put forward by Usdaw, called on Labour to ensure that the importance of the retail sector and high streets is reflected in Labour’s industrial strategy and to send a message of support to all Wilko workers.

It demands that the party replace business rates with a “fairer system” and deliver on the “strongest possible legal protections” against violence and abuse for frontline retail workers as soon as possible.

The motion also urges Labour to work with retail unions to establish a taskforce to deal with the “challenges” of new technology and automation, ownership standards, administration law and TUPE “as a matter of urgency”.

New Deal for Working People – composite motion eleven – was also passed on a show of hands. The motion, moved by the Communication Workers Union (CWU), states that the “expansion of the gig economy has created a major barrier to improving pay, conditions and security for workers”.

The motion sees conference affirm that there will be “no regression” from Labour’s New Deal for Working People and states that Labour in government “will immediately implement” the New Deal “in full”.

The motion states this should include “widespread” rollout of sectoral collective bargaining, a “fully resourced” Single Enforcement Body, increasing Statutory Sick Pay and extending it to the self-employed, as well as simplifying the process of union recognition and ensuring “reasonable access” within workplaces.

The motion also saw conference resolve that the next Labour government should understand that the New Deal is an “electoral advantage” and commit “properly” to implementing a single status of worker and ending “bogus self-employment” within the first term.

Violence against women and girls – the first of the two motions from women’s conference – was passed by delegates on a show of hands. The motion, moved by Cambridge CLP, states that “tackling gender-based violence should be one of the highest priorities for the next Labour government”.

The motion covers very similar ground to composite motion eight, adding that a cross-government approach should be taken that recognises the “critical role of women’s organisations in tackling VAWG”. The motion also urges Labour to make ending sexual violence in conflict a “core part of its international agenda”.

Equal pay – the second women’s conference motion –also carried on a show of hands. Put forward by the GMB, it saw conference resolve that “large firms” should be required to develop, publish and implement action plans to close their gender pay gaps, with outsourced workers included in their gender pay gap and pay ratio reporting.

It saw conference resolve that the publication of ethnicity and disability pay gaps should be made mandatory for employers with more than 250 staff.

The motion calls on the party to include “clear equal pay commitments” in its next general election manifesto, “building on and including” the 2023 National Policy Forum report, and to take action against discriminatory pay structures in government and close the gender pay gap.

It urges the party to work with trade unions to “build on Barbara Castle’s legacy and eliminate the injustice of pay discrimination”.

It also demands that Labour “actively” pursue global goals to achieve women’s equality and empower all women and girls and that the party review the “failing” parental leave system in its first year in power.

Below is the full text of today’s motions:

Composite 8 – Violence against women and girls

Every woman and girl should feel safe in their home, on our streets, in their school or workplace and in our wider community. Yet, violence against women and girls remains endemic in Britain today.

Under the Conservatives, our criminal justice system is failing the women and girls who become victims of these crimes. The charge rate for rape has collapsed and across the criminal justice system, millions of victims are now dropping out. Too many victims wait years for justice because of the huge backlog in the courts, caused by 13 years of Conservative chaos in the justice system.

Tackling violence against women and girls must be a coordinated effort across government, not just limited to crime and justice reform, to ensure Labour can deliver on its mission in government to halve levels of VAWG.

Conference notes:

• The number of devastating and high-profile murders of women.
• Domestic abuse is the most prevalent form of violence against women and girls, with nearly one in five crimes recorded by the police being domestic abuse related.
• The rising impact of online misogynist influencers.
• The centrality of relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) in schools to tackling VAWG and online misogyny.
• The private family law system often fails to safeguard children and DA victims, especially in cases of coercive control.
• The need to ensure that measures addressing VAWG are fully inclusive of all victims of VAWG, including women who are BAME, transgender, disabled, migrant women and children of domestic abuse victims.
• The need for employers to take reasonable steps to ensure all their workers are safe

Conference calls on the Labour Party to:

• Review sentencing for domestic abuse.
• Introduce a guideline minimum sentence of seven years for rape, which better reflects the seriousness of the crime.
• Review the use of the Sexual Harm Prevention Order for sexually motivated violence.
• Roll out specialist rape courts to tackle the unacceptably low rates of prosecution for rape by fast tracking rape cases through the court system to improve victims’ experience.
• Ensure a comprehensive reform of the private family law system.
• Introduce a specific new criminal offence for spiking.
• Introducing new custodial sentences for those who name victims of rape and sexual assault.
• Ensure domestic abuse survivors can access the support, including financial support, they need quickly.
• Introducing a survivor support package to improve victims’ experience in the courts – including fast tracking cases, legal help, better training for professionals.
• End the promotion of harmful content online to tackle harassment and abuse experienced on social media platforms.
• Overhaul police standards system, by introducing new national compulsory standards on vetting, checks and misconduct.
• Ensure within each police force in England and Wales there is a specialist rape and serious sexual offence unit and set accountable standards for the way victims of sexual abuse and violence are treated.

Mover: Cheadle CLP
Seconder: Central Devon CLP

Composite 9 – Ethics and standards in politics

Under the Tories, Prime Ministers and ministers have broken the rules with impunity because the rules are too weak. To restore trust in our political system, the next Labour government must stamp out corruption in government, strengthen the rules and ensure they are enforced.

Labour will clean up our politics and undo the damage the Tories have caused through sleaze and scandal.

Labour will:

• Establish a new independent integrity and ethics commission, with the power to investigate misconduct and breaches of the ministerial code, including access to any evidence it needs.
• Ban second jobs for MPs, with only very limited exemptions for public service roles or to maintain professional qualifications.
• Ban former ministers from lobbying, consultancy or any paid work related to their former job for at least five years, closing the revolving door between ministerial office and lobbying for companies they used to regulate.

Labour will make it mandatory for former ministers to apply to the integrity and ethics commission before accepting any job.

Mover: Halton CLP
Seconder: Barking CLP

Composite 10 – Challenges facing retail and the high street

Conference recognises that retail is at the heart of our communities – but that it is facing growing challenges. Retail workers are denied a fair deal.

The economic environment, combined with an inadequate employment rights framework, has put many jobs at risk. Wilko’s collapse in September 2023 led to 12,500 direct job losses.

Conference recognises that this was not inevitable, as shareholders extracted dividends worth £77m in the last ten years.

Conference recognises GMB’s work to try to save Wilko and GMB’s campaigns to protect and improve jobs and secure equal pay in Asda.

Conference further recognises that Wilko was not the first and it will not be the last, noting that GMB research shows that hundreds of thousands of brick-and-mortar retail jobs have been lost since 2010.

Usdaw’s ‘Freedom From Fear’ campaign has also highlighted the horrific level of abuse and violence faced by frontline retail workers and the need for meaningful action to tackle this. In addition, the increased use of technology across the sector is significantly impacting working practices, not just in terms of online retail but also the growing digitisation in stores.

When taken together, retail workers are facing unprecedented challenges affecting every aspect of their working lives.

Conference welcomes Labour’s commitment to increasing security of work in the New Deal, including strengthening redundancy rights and protections, and to implementing for all workers the measures in the Protection of Workers (Retail and Age-restricted Goods and Services) (Scotland) Act 2021 that currently protect Scottish retail workers from abuse and violence.

Conference acknowledges that:

• Jobs and shops are being lost on the high street because the antiquated business rates system penalises investment.
• Retail workers are exposed to low wages and violence, despite their recognition as key workers when the pandemic struck.

Conference therefore calls on Labour to:

• Send a message of support to all Wilko workers.
• Ensure that the importance of the retail sector and our communities’ high streets is reflected in Labour’s industrial strategy, emphasising the need to protect jobs, deliver growth and provide security of employment.
• Replace business rates with a fairer system.
• Deliver on the strongest possible legal protections against violence and abuse for frontline retail workers as soon as possible.
• Work with retail unions to establish a taskforce to deal with the challenges of new technology and automation, ownership standards, administration law and TUPE as a matter of urgency, in order to protect jobs and to make sure that the economy is well positioned to adapt.

Mover: Usdaw
Seconder: GMB

Composite 11 – New Deal for Working People

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed how grotesquely undervalued workers are in our society. Instead of learning lessons from this life-altering period, inequalities are growing and are being exacerbated by today’s world of work.

Business leaders used to be paid to build companies, create growth and secure employment. Now, profiteering is increasingly shaping our world of work, with short-term profits favoured over long-term investment.

The expansion of the gig economy has created a major barrier to improving pay, conditions and security for workers everywhere. Companies bogusly self-employ workers with no consequence, pushing down wages across entire sectors of the economy. These companies and their employment practices need to be fundamentally changed.

Outside the workplace, our society is literally crumbling and public services are beyond breaking point. Yet the wealthiest in our society escape fair taxation and profiteering has become the norm.

It is clear that after 13 years of Tory rule, the world of work is completely broken and workers need change immediately.

Conference commends Keir Starmer’s key role in developing A New Deal for Working People and welcomes the vital role Andy McDonald and Angela Rayner have played making it government-ready. Working with trade union affiliates, the New Deal will be immediately implemented in full when in government, to shift balance towards labour, away from capital.

Conference affirms there will be no regression from the New Deal.

Conference welcomes Labour’s commitment to repeal in full the Trade Union Act 2016, the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses (Amendment) Regulations 2022 and the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 (MSLs). Conference agrees with TUC 2023 policy to build mass opposition to the MSLs laws, up to and including a strategy of non-compliance and non-cooperation to make them unworkable, including industrial action.

Congress resolves that the next Labour government should:

• Understand that the New Deal for Workers is an electoral advantage, not a disadvantage and implement it in its entirety when elected.
• Expand their commitment to sectoral collective bargaining beyond one sector to tackle the imbalance of power in the workplace.
• Commit properly to implementing a single status of worker and end bogus self-employment within the first term of a Labour government.

Labour in government will immediately implement A New Deal for Working People in full including:

• Widespread rollout across the economy of sectoral collective bargaining.
• Repeal of anti-trade union legislation including Trade Union Act 2016, the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023.
• End ‘fire and rehire’ and ‘fire and replace’, replace the inadequate statutory code and reform the law to provide effective remedies against abuse.
• A fully resourced Single Enforcement Body.
• Increase Statutory Sick Pay and extend to self-employed.
• Simplify the process of union recognition and ensure reasonable access within workplaces.

Mover: CWU
Seconder: FBU

Motion from women’s conference – Violence against women and girls

Every woman and girl should feel safe in their home, on our streets, in their school or workplace and in our wider community. Yet, violence against women and girls (VAWG) remains endemic in Britain today.

Tackling gender-based violence should be one of the highest priorities for the next Labour government.

Our criminal justice system is failing the women and girls who become victims of these crimes. The charge rate for rape has collapsed, and across the criminal justice system, millions of victims are now dropping out.

The UK victims commissioner warned that ‘we are witnessing the decriminalisation of rape’ and, in her 2022 resignation letter, cited ‘a catastrophic backlog of cases ‘leading to a ‘criminal justice system in chaos’.

Conference notes:

• Street harassment and violence against women and girls in the UK is endemic.
• More than a decade on from the UN’s first resolution to eliminate sexual violence in conflict, many victims are waiting for services and justice. We acknowledge the impact of climate change leading to displacement and vulnerability of women and girls to sex and domestic labour trafficking.
• Women and girls are particularly vulnerable to trafficking and modern slavery because of power, economic, social and political discrimination and exploitation.
• The UK has obligations to reduce demand for sexual exploitation under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

Women’s conference calls on the Labour Party:

• Introduce a new statutory minimum sentence of seven years for rape, which better reflects the seriousness of the crime.
• Roll out specialist rape courts to tackle the unacceptably low rates of prosecution for rape by fast tracking rape cases through the court system.
• Introduce a specific new criminal offence for spiking.
• Overhaul police standards system, by introducing new national compulsory standards on vetting, checks and misconduct.
• Ensure each police force has a specialist rape and serious sexual offence unit
• End the promotion of harmful content online to tackle harassment and abuse experienced on social media.
• Cross-government approach recognising the critical role of women’s organisations in tackling VAWG.
• Labour will make ending sexual violence in conflict a core part of its international agenda to bring new drive to the UN campaign.

Mover: Cambridge CLP
Seconder: Northampton North CLP

Motion from women’s conference – Equal pay

Conference notes that Labour is the party of equal pay and that, under the Conservatives, the gender pay gap is narrowing too slowly, pregnancy and maternity discrimination has risen, the tribunal system is beset by delays, denying women pay justice and inequality remains rife.

Conference recognises the historic and structural undervaluing of women’s work and the long legacy of unequal pay in both the public and private sectors, including local government, and conference notes with concern that hundreds of millions of pounds of women’s equal wages continue to be withheld.

Women’s economic inequalities come in many forms including unpaid care work and maternity discrimination. Under the Tories, pregnancy and maternity discrimination has risen.

These behaviours mirror inequality throughout society in general and are so much worse for women of colour and disabled women. It is they who so often experience multiple discrimination – which sadly exists even in organisations which should be bastions of equality and change.

Five decades after Barbara Castle’s Equal Pay Act and despite the introduction of mandatory gender pay gap reporting in 2017, women are still paid less on average than men, and progress made in narrowing the gap appears to have stalled, even in sectors like education and healthcare where the workforce is overwhelmingly female. In 2022, the UK’s estimated average gender pay gap for all employees was 14.9%.

Conference condemns attempts to deny women fair pay, including through the use of outsourcing, and notes that unless the support and caring jobs that women do are properly valued, the gender pay gap will remain stubbornly wide. Pay inequity for working women extends into retirement. Over two-thirds of pensioners living in poverty are women.

More must be done to fully understand the impact of multiple pay gaps and that work to close the gender pay gap must also pay attention to the intersectional profile of the workforce. Research suggests that the gender pay gaps faced by Black or disabled women are higher.

Labour is undertaking a gender pay gap review that will engage with the women’s sector, trade unions, local government and business organisations, to identify and eliminate these inequalities in earnings and support working women, including self-employed women and mothers of young children.

Conference welcomes important commitments secured through the National Policy Forum:

• Introduce measures to end the outsourcing of services to avoid paying equal pay.
• Implement a regulatory and enforcement unit for equal pay with involvement from trade unions.
• Restore the ability to draw on equal pay comparators where workers’ terms and conditions can be attributed to a single source.

Conference resolves that:

• Large firms should be required to develop, publish and implement action plans to close their gender pay gaps, with outsourced workers included in their gender pay gap and pay ratio reporting. A Labour government should ensure pay gap reporting and for gender pay ‘action plans’ to be mandatory for employers with more than 250 staff.
• Following years of inaction from the government, the publication of ethnicity and disability pay gaps should also be made mandatory for employers with more than 250 staff, to mirror gender pay gap reporting.

Conference calls on the Labour Party to:

• Include clear equal pay commitments in its next general election manifesto, building on and including the 2023 National Policy Forum report and take action against discriminatory pay structures in government and close the gender pay gap.
• Work with trade unions to build on Barbara Castle’s legacy and eliminate the injustice of pay discrimination.
• Actively pursue global goals to achieve women’s equality and empower all women and girls as set out in Section 5 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and CEDAW to help eliminate discrimination and ensure gender equality.
• Within the first year in office review the failing system of parental leave system so that it best supports working families.

Mover: GMB
Seconder: UNISON