BETRAYAL: Starmer shafts workers on International Workers Day.

Right, so as people head to the polls today to vote for local councillors, metro mayors, police and crime commissioners and all the rest of it, Keir Starmer chose the day before, on International Workers Day at that, just to add insult to injury, to weaken Labour party policy on workers rights. He appears to have such disdain for ordinary working people, such contempt for them, that he was prepared to choose that day of all days to send a message out that he’s for the bosses and not for you and yet still thinks you’ll vote for him anyway, just to get the Tories out. Labour are no longer the people of the working class, made up overwhelmingly of faceless suits who’ve never had a real job in their lives and nothing quite dots the I’s and crosses the T’s on that than having a knight of the realm leading them. Starmer has lied to you again, so I hope you thought long and hard before putting a cross next to a Labour candidates name in today’s local elections.
Right, so worker’s rights Starmer has watered down Labour policy on this score yet again, it’s not even the first time, having binned off plans some 8 months ago now to actually strengthen workers rights, telling us Labour would stand by the rights of workers as they are now under the Tories, which was hardly ambitious and certainly didn’t live up to the name of the Party – Labour, you’re called it for a reason, the trouble is those Labour benches, those Labour seats are filled with too many who’ve never done a proper days work in their lives and are therefore completely detached and out of touch with the lives of ordinary working class people and what we all need to do day in and day out to get by.
But to choose the 1st of May, International Workers Day, it’s literally called Labor Day in some countries, to announce a weakening of workers rights under a future Labour government again I ask you, where the heck is the difference here between the Tories we have now and this red Tory with no more interest in making your life better than the cretins in power now?
Why have the done it? Business and bosses, ie donors as far as Labour goes these days, have apparently been squealing like stuck pigs that Labour’s plan for a ‘New Deal For Working People’ as it has been trumpeted since 2021 now, will hurt them too much. A proper Labour Party would turn around and tell them, you’ve had it good for long enough, ordinary working class people need a better deal from their employers now, so suck it up buttercups, but instead Starmer has seemingly gone leave it with me, I’ll see what I can do instead. If you’re on their side, you’re a Tory. We have a party of big business and bosses already, we don’t need two, let alone be trapped by an unfair electoral system condemning us to only ever be ruled by one or the other.
Labour had promised higher sick pay, they had promised and end to the disgusting practice of fire and rehire, even though under Starmer, Labour had engaged in that practice themselves after blowing much of the money Corbyn had left in the party coffers in multiple rounds of redundancies, only to try and hire some of them back again on worse terms and conditions. There was also a pledge to reverse anti strike laws even though Starmer refuses to attend pickets since he became Labour leader and banned frontbenchers from doing so as well, showing no solidarity with workers at all.
Always with Starmer it doesn’t matter what he says, his word is so worthless you couldn’t afford to buy a copy of yesterdays newspaper with it, it is always what he does that matters, his actions speak louder and more importantly more honestly than anything he says. Fire and rehire, won’t show solidarity with workers and now wants to take more of your rights away to appease your bosses and not you.
Just last February gone, he told business chiefs that it wouldn’t please everyone in the room, yet now business leaders are saying that having spoken to members of the party at several business meetings with them, they were instead feeling pretty relaxed about them. Seems safe to assume they won’t amount to much at all then?
Apparently shadow ministers have been working to placate business leaders by bringing them on board and holding consultations with them on what they would like to see and these are to some extent apparently ongoing, hence no new version of the New Deal to publish, but when Labour are choosing to sit with the bosses to work out workers rights and not the workers, you don’t actually need to know what’s coming to know it’s going to be worse for you, as Labour seeks to look better to the eyes of business leaders, solely of course to neuter any Tory attack lines. The problem is the more like the Tories you act, the more you invite accusations of being Tories yourselves, If it walks like a Tory and talks like a Tory and all of that and actually given there is so little detail to put flesh on the bones of this now, it makes it look even worse than these plans to weaken workers rights came out on International Workers Day, because you don’t even have the common decency to announce in what ways it’s going to be a worse deal, just that it will be! This was supposed to be one of those mission led approaches to policy wasn’t it? Is it now his mission to weaken the mission he had before then and that is the mission led approach he’s now taking?
Nevertheless, although details are scant, the Financial Times has mentioned a couple of points. Zero hours contracts which Labour were set to ban, now won’t be. Instead there will be a right to an houred contract reflecting a regular work pattern over the first 12 weeks of employment. Will this be an enforceable right or not though? Not clear. Starmer also touted a right to be able to switch off and not have the boss contact you in your free time, this was to be enshrined into law and now won’t happen either, it’ll be listed in the code of practice overseen by ACAS arbitration services, and smaller companies will be exempt from it entirely. The single status for employment is out of the window now, now reduced to a consultation, so a chat with bosses over that then presumably and where fair pay agreements were due to be implemented in all work sectors, that will now only be in the social care sector. They are also going to review parental leave, but again if it is only the employers you are interested in consulting with, how can these things ever be done in working people’s interests?
Of course Labour figures, nameless of course are apparently all saying, this is not a U-turn, but when it amounts to leaving things as the Tories have them now, or weakening them further because instead of talking to the people your party is meant to represent, you’re talking to their employers!
Well the fun and games is just beginning. Labour haven’t yet taken these ideas to the Trade Unions for their assent yet and they aren’t very likely to I wouldn’t imagine!
Unite boss Sharon Graham, herself having been subpoenaed to give evidence in an employment tribunal case in Ireland, where she and her union are accused of being bad bosses, so a bit rich wading into this story, nevertheless tweeted out saying:
'Choosing May Day to give notice of watering down your promise to overhaul one of the worst sets of employment rights in Europe is beyond irony.'
It’s impossible to not agree with that, even if it has come from her.
Another far better spokeperson for the Union movement is Matt Wrack of the Fire Brigades Union, who spoke to the FT in this excerpt:
‘Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, who currently holds the TUC’s rotating presidency, told the Financial Times there should be “no rolling back” of Labour’s “New Deal for Working People”. “My message is very clear, no rolling back . . . if there is any more rolling back on the New Deal, they can expect a hostile reaction to it,” he said. “People are not willing to just give up on this or retreat simply because Labour is the only show in town.”’
So here’s hoping if it does all come out, and let’s face it, that consultation with the unions could be a day of reckoning where more details may become public knowledge, more people will wake up to just how pathetic this future Labour government allegedly in waiting is and that more people choose a better alternative than both of these main parties that you can’t seem to fit a fag paper in between anymore.
Meanwhile what details we do have about Starmer’s relationship to workers rights or lack thereof as has come out in previous months can be seen on this video recommendation here, what he’s already walked back on and given that’s his attitude, who would be brave enough to assume there wouldn’t be more U-turning and more watering down to come and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.