For 45 years, ever since Margaret Thatcher was first elected, Britons have had to get used to the idea that trade unions and workers’ rights are weakening. Changes in the economy and technology, in the mindset of employers and employees, and above all in government policy have left unions and workers in a weaker position here than in most wealthy democracies. The consequences of this relentless removal of power from the majority can be seen in this country’s precarious working culture and often low wages – a status quo around which rightwing politicians, thinktanks, journalists and business interests have erected great walls of justifying arguments and rhetoric.
So the notion that this seemingly permanent shift might be reversed, through Keir Starmer’s ambitiously named “new deal for working people”, can at first be quite hard to absorb. At the TUC congress in Brighton this week, the first prime minister to address the gathering for 15 years promised “the biggest levelling up of workers’ rights in a generation”, to enthusiastic applause. Yet there were also large empty spaces in the main hall, and in the foyers where unions had exhibition stalls, which made the labour movement’s diminished state impossible to ignore.
Most of this country’s 6.4 million trade unionists – barely a fifth of all employees, compared with more than half in 1979 – have more experience of defeats and rearguard actions, of trying to defend their remaining rights, than of moments of opportunity. That this new opportunity is being offered by a Labour party that has moved sharply to the right under Starmer makes it all the more disorienting.
“We now have a Labour government which is introducing things that we demand at congress every year almost despite itself,” said Matt Wrack, the leftwing general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, at a fringe meeting in Brighton. At another fringe gathering where excitement mingled with apprehension, Mick Whelan, general secretary of the train drivers’ union Aslef, said of talking to the government about workers’ rights: “We’re pushing at an open door.” Only half-joking, he added: “I’m terrified. We might get some of this wrong.”
There are many arguments for rebalancing our economy and employment laws in the ways Labour intends, which include banning “exploitative zero-hours contracts” and the firing and then rehiring of workers on lower wages. One of the strongest reasons is that the weak worker model has failed on its own terms: since 1979, Britain’s growth rate and productivity have not been transformed as the right promised. Meanwhile, regional and social divisions have widened, with ever more alarming consequences. Given that Starmer says he wants to make the country more dynamic and united, and rarely fails to remind us about his working-class background, his enthusiasm for workers’ rights is less surprising than it first seems.
In this respect, he is a more leftwing Labour leader than Tony Blair, who during the 1997 election reassured the rightwing press and big business that under a Blair government British law would remain “the most restrictive on trade unions in the western world”. Under Starmer, the supposedly classless, actually hierarchical vision of the world of work which New Labour promoted with a mixture of naivety and disingenuousness is out of favour, at least for now. It’s impolite to say so in most Labour circles, but this shift in the party’s thinking actually started during the leaderships of Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn.
What might be the consequences of Labour’s apparent workerist turn? One will almost certainly be a lot of furious rightwing journalists, already fuming at the government for giving public sector staff long-deserved pay rises.
Another may be a lot of aggravated employers. Starmer insisted at Brighton that he wants “partnership” between business and the unions, and that there is “a mood of change in the business world. A growing understanding of … the shared self-interest that comes from treating the workforce with respect and dignity. The productivity gain of fairness.” Countries where more employers behave like this, such as Germany and Sweden, have often outperformed Britain economically since the 1980s, and this country already has some long-established, relatively worker-friendly companies such as John Lewis and Richer Sounds. Yet they are a minority, after decades of Anglo-American capitalism assuming that employees are more of a cost than an asset. Squeezing them may not have worked for the British economy as a whole, but individual businesses have profited lavishly, and many will lobby hard to turn Labour’s new deal into no big deal.
Unions are conscious of the danger. Onay Kasab of Unite, one of the unions most sceptical about Starmer’s willingness to change the country, pointed out in Brighton that Labour’s insertion of the word “exploitative” into its pledge to ban zero-hours contracts, for example, enabled it to avoid banning such contracts altogether. Despite generally being seen as a dry, rigid and evidence-driven politician, Starmer often uses language that has an emotive force and slippery meaning, for instance promising to “make work pay” and “deliver for working people”. In the huge gap between these uplifting generalities and the intricate web of workplace controls, threats and rewards that rule millions of British lives, the new deal for working people will have to be carefully drawn up and then negotiated.
The government promises that at least some of its benefits will be clear within weeks. “We’ve got to show people quickly the difference a Labour government can make,” said the minister for employment rights, Justin Madders, in Brighton this week. His ministerial title alone, newly created, unthinkable under the Conservatives, suggested a welcome shift in Whitehall priorities. But the union delegates listening to him were not declaring victory yet. “The proof of the pudding is in the eating,” said one.
And yet, paradoxically, Starmer’s mounting difficulties may ensure that major employment reforms do take place. During Blair’s initial years as prime minister, he did not need to do much for the unions, or for employees generally, because he had so much support from so many electoral groups, and because a strong economy was making many workers wealthier anyway. By contrast, Starmer badly needs workers’ votes, and a bigger economic contribution from them as producers and consumers. And as every good union negotiator knows, being needed is half the battle.
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Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist