by René Lavanchy
LABOUR’S affiliated trade unions have this week drawn up their demands for the party’s policy commitments at the next general election.
The “Warwick Two” agenda, named after the 2004 Warwick Agreement, will be considered by Labour’s National Policy Forum next month. But a source close to discussions told Tribune that unions are also pressing for meetings with Number 10, one of which is expected next week.
Key areas of interest to the unions are:
- New rules to protect the jobs of workers whose companies are bought out by private equity firms, on the lines of John Heppel’s unsuccessful private members’ bill earlier this year. The TUC and unions maintain that buyouts such as Saga’s takeover of the AA last year lead inevitably to redundancies;
- Mandatory company audits to ensure equal pay between men and women, a policy supported at last year’s Labour Party Conference and by Harriet Harman before she became Labour deputy leader;
- Reform of laws governing industrial action, including a provision enabling unions to ballot their members by phone or e-mail, and provision for secondary industrial action by workers in the same company. A union official said that if a company closed one factory and other closures were mooted, workers in other factories should be able to strike;
- An extension of the role of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority into the construction industry in order to prevent exploitation of workers on building sites, a move supported by construction union UCATT but resisted by the Government;
- A greater commitment by the Government to procuring more goods and services from Britain without breaking European Union competition law. A union official said: “Somehow the French and the Germans can use procurement to the benefit of their own workforce but Britain doesn’t seem to be good at that”;
- Reform of the minimum wage. In a rare instance of disagreement, some unions are keen to see an end to the current age-based banding and fixed annual increases, while others want the Low Pay Commission to continue advising on the wage.
Although unions want more freedom to carry out industrial action, they have decided not to go as far as Labour MP John McDonnell’s Trade Union Freedom Bill.
Mr McDonnell’s bill, which was killed off in Parliament last year, would have made it easier for unions to give formal notice of strike action to companies, and harder for employers to sack workers who had taken industrial action.
A union source said that Warwick II was “not the best forum” to raise all the same demands again. Details were being finalised as Tribune went to press, but an official said unions were “singing from the same hymn sheet”.
A committee of the Trade Union and Labour Party Liaison Organisation will submit draft proposals to the NPF and hand over discussions to the general secretaries of each of Labour’s 16 affiliated unions.
It is unclear how the Labour leadership, the unions and the NPF will work together to agree on policies. A union source described the process as “smoke and mirrors”, adding: “No one wants to have the discussion [only] on the floor of the National Policy Forum.”
