Campaign for Trade Union Freedom – Fighting to defend and enhance trade unionism

Nowak tells Tory & Lib Dems Peers To “Get Out Of The Way” On ERB

Posted on July 28, 2025 By Tony Burke

Paul Nowack, TUC General Secterary. (c) TUC

The TUC has told Conservative and Lib-Dem peers in the House of Lords to ‘stop trying to block’ stronger rights for millions of workers and says the government should “stand firm” in the face of what it calls “cynical” attacks on the Employment Rights Bill, with the Bill set for further scrutiny after peers voted to replace day-one unfair dismissal rights with a six-month qualifying period in the Lords last week.

The day-one right to make a claim for unfair dismissal was one of the key pledges in Labour’s pre-election manifesto published last year.

Early drafts of the legislation referred to an “initial period of employment” when employers could dismiss staff for a certain number of reasons, but this period was not specified.

The Lords have now voted to remove this initial period entirely, and have amended the Bill to reduce the qualifying period for unfair dismissal from the current two years to six months.

The TUC said the Tories and Lib Dems are “doing the bidding of bad bosses by voting to allow employers six months to sack workers unfairly”.

Th TUC is also concerned that the ban on zero-hour contracts will be weakened after further votes.

The Bill will return to the House of Commons in September for MPs to consider the Lords’ amendments.

TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said: “It’s time for Tory and Lib Dem Peers to get out of the way and stop trying to block stronger rights for millions of workers.

“They are doing the bidding of bad bosses by voting to keep workers on zero-hour contracts, allowing bosses to sack workers unfairly and attacking teaching assistants’ pay.

“The sight of hereditary peers voting to block stronger workers’ rights belongs in another century. It’s plain wrong.

“Banning zero-hours contracts and protecting workers from unfair dismissal are common-sense protections that the vast majority of the people, including Tory and Lib Dem voters, want to see become law.

“These peers are not just out of touch, they are actively defying their own voters – and the public at large. The government must stand firm in the face of cynical attacks and deliver the Employment Rights Bill in full.”

The changes to unfair dismissal regulations are timetabled to come into force in 2027, according to a roadmap published by the government at the start of July.

The Employment Rights Bill Has A Very Long Road Ahead

Posted on July 21, 2025July 21, 2025 By Tony Burke

The Bill addresses some exploitation but leaves trade unions heavily regulated, most workers without collective bargaining coverage, and fails to tackle the balance of power that enables constant mutation of bad practice.

By Professor Keith Ewing & Lord John Hendy KC

Those who had hoped that Tolpuddle 2025 would have been the occasion to celebrate the enactment of the long-awaited Employment Rights Act 2025 will have to be patient.

The Bill has been delayed in the House of Lords where a campaign is being fought by the Tories to dilute its provisions still further. The proceedings will continue next week, and the Bill is not expected to receive the Royal Assent until September.

But Royal Assent will be only the end of the beginning. Thereafter, the wait will continue. The government has announced that only a few provisions of the Bill will come into force immediately, including the removal of some — but not all — of the restrictions on the right to strike introduced by the Tories in the Trade Union Act 2016, and again in the even more authoritarian Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023.

The great bulk of the Bill, however, is to be phased in piecemeal so that it will not be until 2027 at the earliest that its provisions are fully implemented, with further consultations to take place between now and then.

Under the recently published government “Roadmap,” it will be October 2026 before the changes on fire and rehire are brought into force, the Bill’s provisions on zero-hours contracts, bereavement leave, and day one rights for unfair dismissal delayed even longer until 2027.

The next two years will thus be consumed by further consultations and drafting extensive regulations, a process which will inevitably reveal flashpoints and weaknesses, beginning with the fact that this is a Bill for some but not all workers.

Many of its provisions apply only to employees (including those relating to flexible working, statutory sick pay, fire and rehire, and redundancy consultation), a narrow legal category which excludes large and growing numbers employed in the gig economy and elsewhere.

The Bill thus retains and reinforces the multitier system which, in *A New Deal for Working People*, the Labour Party undertook to reform. A commitment was made there to “create a single status of worker,” to ensure that “all workers, regardless of sector, wage or contract type, will be afforded the same basic rights and protections.”

This had been promised in order to clamp down on bogus self-employment and prevent unscrupulous employers from using loopholes to put workers in categories where they were denied basic rights. The government promises only consultation on single status — there is nothing in the Bill on the subject.

But with the implementation of the new rights, together with the recent increase in employers’ National Insurance contributions, it would be naive to think that employers will not continue to use and expand recruitment practices that avoid and undermine workers’ rights.

Even where practices of this kind are not adopted, a major obstacle to the Bill’s success will be its enforcement: the employment tribunals are already in a state of crisis, with an expanding case-load, and long delays confounding the need for the speedy resolution of disputes.

These problems can be expected to grow as a result of the complexity, lack of clarity, and cost implications of various parts of the Bill. This is particularly true of the proposed day one rights, and the fire-and-rehire restrictions (diluted by the government in the Lords).

In other situations, however, the law will be simply be unenforced. How many people on a zero-hours contract will dare to challenge their employer for failing to offer a “guaranteed hours” contract — and then wait for months to have their case heard?

Concerns about the Bill apply with equal force to its provisions designed ostensibly to protect trade unions. Forget about the right of trade union access to a workplace for organising purposes: an access order can be granted, but there is no way an employer can be compelled to comply.

And be sceptical too about the provisions to address union busting: if a union fails to get a declaration of recognition, it will still be three years before it can try again; even if it succeeds, an employer is not required to reach an agreement on wages or other terms and conditions.

Amendments in the Bill to the statutory recognition procedure simply patch up what is an irretrievably broken system, which has failed to arrest the extraordinary decline in collective bargaining coverage over the last 40 years or so. Now only one in four workers is covered by a collective agreement, though even that may be an overestimate.

That’s why ‘A New Deal for Working People’ called for tougher government action, by proposing the roll out of sectoral collective bargaining. The need is clear: to expand the coverage of collective agreements; to empower trade unions; and to protect workers and their families.

But sectoral collective bargaining is also about redistributing wealth, raising wages, and eliminating exploitation, to ensure — adapting the words of the ILO — that everyone enjoys a “just share of the fruits of [growth],” about which the Bill has virtually nothing to say.

Nevertheless, reference to the ILO leads to another of the Bill’s omissions. The restrictions on the right to strike did not begin with the Trade Union Act 2016. Indeed, most of the constraints on trade unions were imposed in the Thatcher and Major years, and have been condemned by the ILO and by other agencies in international law since 1989.

International treaties voluntarily entered into should be complied with: the rule of law requires nothing less. As a result, we should be going further with the removal of legal restrictions on the right to strike, including those regulating the purposes for which unions can organise industrial action, as well as what will continue to be complex notice and ballot requirements even after the Bill is implemented.

And as we were reminded by the ILO after the P&O Ferries scandal, the ban on solidarity action must be removed, so that unions can at least more effectively resist employers who fail to comply with their legal obligations.

At best, the Bill addresses some of the worst forms of exploitation. But it does not address them all, it does not address them adequately, and it will not prevent the constant mutation of bad practice.

In failing seriously to address the balance of power at work and beyond, the Bill nods in the direction of trade union freedom and collective bargaining, yet leaves trade unions heavily regulated and the vast majority of workers without bargaining coverage.

If the Bill is to be welcomed, it should be as the first step in what will be a very long journey.

This article appeared in the Morning Star on July 19th.

Orgreave Campaign: Government To Hold Independent Inquiry

Posted on July 21, 2025 By Tony Burke

The following is an official statement issued July 20th by the Orgreave Truth & Justice Campaign

Since setting up in 2012 the Orgreave Truth & Justice Campaign (OTJC) have worked relentlessly to place on the political agenda the urgent need for an inquiry into the role of the police and government during the miners’ strike at the Orgreave coking plant on 18th June 1984 and why neither the police or government have ever been held to account.

An inquiry should give clear answers to:

who was responsible for organising and ordering the deployment of multiple police forces, including mounted police armed with truncheons, shields and dogs, against striking miners?
who and how was it decided that striking miners should be attacked and arrested at Orgreave and charged with riot and unlawful assembly, which carried heavy prison sentences?
why has the police operational order for police deployments that day disappeared and other evidence been destroyed or embargoed until 2066 and 2071?

The revelations about the role of South Yorkshire Police (SYP) in the Hillsborough tragedy after the report of the Hillsborough Independent Panel in September 2012, the Inside Out television programme of October 2012 highlighting fabricated evidence by SYP against miners charged at Orgreave and the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) report of May 2015 indicating the need for a wider inquiry into policing at Orgreave, gave further impetus for why the OTJC rightly believed that the case for an inquiry was absolutely necessary. The Conservative Government repeatedly refused to hold any kind of Orgreave inquiry.

Labour Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper MP has recently been exploring the key issues for an inquiry / investigation such as the scope and format to ensure it best meets the needs outlined by various stakeholders including the OTJC, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), lawyers and politicians. We are pleased that the Home Secretary has now ordered that an independent inquiry with statutory powers will finally go ahead and we look forward to meeting with the Chair of that inquiry to discuss the draft terms of reference of the inquiry.

OTJC Secretary, Kate Flannery, said:

“We have waited a long time for this day and this is really positive news. All these years of hard work by the OTJC and our many supporters has helped to influence this constructive announcement. We appreciate the Labour Party’s 9 year commitment to holding some kind of Orgreave inquiry. We now need to be satisfied that the inquiry is given the necessary powers to fully investigate all the aspects of the orchestrated policing at Orgreave, and have unrestricted access to all relevant information including government, police and media documents, photos and films”

Kevin Horne, miner arrested at Orgreave said:

“It is now over 41 years since a paramilitary style police operation was planned at Orgreave and it is important to remember that some of the miners attacked and arrested there are now dead and many others are old and ill. We need a quick and thorough inquiry with a tight timescale so that surviving miners can at last obtain the truth and justice they have been waiting for. Plenty of information exists and has already been obtained to give an inquiry a substantial head start”

Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper MP said:

“I pay tribute to the campaigners who never stopped in their search for truth and justice, and I look forward to continuing to work with them as we build an inquiry that gets the answers they and their communities deserve.”

The inquiry should:

•have the power to require all the relevant information and evidence to be produced to it;

•ensure those who have an interest in the inquiry must be able to fully participate in order to lend their experience, knowledge and understanding to the process;

•be accessible and inclusive to allow people to provide oral contributions to the evidence gathering process.

This is an historic and momentous announcement, and the OTJC looks forward to the next stages and the inquiry commencing as soon as possible.

CTUF: The Employment Rights Bill Does Not Go Far Enough

Posted on July 18, 2025July 18, 2025 By Tony Burke

By Adrian Weir, Assistant Secretary of the Campaign for Trade Union Freedom;

It is only trade union power at work that will materially improve the lot of working people as a class but without sector-wide collective bargaining and a right to take sympathetic strike action, we are hamstrung in the fight to tilt back the balance of power.

As we mark, certainly not celebrate, one year of the Starmer government, the Employment Rights Bill slowly grinds its way through the House of Lords, heading towards royal assent and becoming law. Coincidentally the International Trade Union Confederation has just published its Global Rights Index that measures trade union rights around the world.
We know that Britain has some of the most restrictive labour rights in Europe as the multimillionaire lobbyist for the disreputable Tony Blair reminded us back in 1998. So it would be worth using the ITUC’s Global Rights Index as a yardstick to measure by how much, if at all, the Employment Rights Bill will improve the situation in Britain.
Such a measurement may also allow us to verify or otherwise the much vaunted claim by the government that “the Employment Rights Bill could deliver the biggest upgrade in workers’ rights in a generation.”
The context is, as ITUC general secretary Luc Triangle says: “The 2025 ITUC Global Rights Index exposes the outcomes of the betrayal of the system built after World War II, founded on democracy, trade union rights and justice … Governments have collaborated in decades of deregulation, neoliberalism and neglect, leading to the collapse of workers’ rights. This has disenfranchised millions and paved the way for extremism, authoritarianism and the billionaire coup against democracy … This is a global scandal but it is not unavoidable, it is a deliberate decision that can be reversed.”

The ITUC Global Rights Index
The ITUC has found that workers’ rights are in freefall across the globe, including in Europe. The ITUC rates countries on a scale of one to five with one being the most respectful of workers’ rights. The union body says that just seven countries have the top ranking of one (the UK is not in this group) with 39 countries rated at five.
To quote from the ITUC survey: “If the current trend continues, no counties will hold a rating of one within the next 10 years.” Europe hits its worst score on record at 2.78; a rapid deterioration from 1.84 in 2014, the biggest decline of a continental region over the past decade.
Turning to Britain, let’s look at how it fares in the index using the three key criteria; (i) freedom of association/right to organise (ii) right to bargain collectively and (iii) right to strike. Spoiler alert, the UK has a ranking score of four — guilty of systematic violations of rights.
On freedom of association/right to organise, although anti-union discrimination is outlawed the law does not provide adequate protection against it.
Further, the Trade Union Act 2016 gives the certification officer (the government-appointed regulator of trade unions and employers’ associations) intrusive powers to examine a union’s finances and membership records; the Act also introduced the right for the CO to monitor a union’s political expenditure with no corresponding right to monitor employers’ associations or other social actors. The Employment Rights Bill, when law, should remove these powers from the certification officer.
The right to collective bargaining does exist in law but it’s on the right to strike where Britain nosedives, with restrictions on the objective of a strike. A trade dispute must exist between an employer and that employer’s employees — so strikes are outlawed if for political, social or solidarity reasons. After 12 weeks on strike, workers may be fairly dismissed; there is a possibility of replacing workers during a lawful strike and although temporary agency labour cannot be directly used to break a strike it is lawful to hire a replacement labour force through an agency in effect to break a strike.
Many other facets of the anti-strike laws were introduced by the 2016 Act. For example, an obligation to secure an excessive quorum or excessive majority in what are deemed as “essential public services;” the appointment of an identifiable “picket supervisor;” excessively long notice periods; excessively long or complex formalities to call a strike — all of which may be repealed with Labour’s Employment Rights Bill when it becomes law. However, it is the case that most, if not all, of the underlying restrictions on the right to strike were created by laws introduced during the Thatcher and Major period in the 1980s and 1990s which, as we shall see, are not slated to be repealed.
New Deal for Working People and the Employment Rights Bill
Labour conference in 2021 adopted the green paper New Deal for Working People that set out a comprehensive programme to renew rights at work in favour of working people and their unions and redress the 40-plus years of neoliberalism that have diminished the status of working people and their standard of living.
Although there was rumour that the knives were out for the New Deal for Working People at the behind-closed-doors national policy forum in 2023, it survived — in name at least — for inclusion in Labour’s 2024 manifesto and the King’s Speech, albeit with the tagline “Making Work Pay.”
Freedom of association and the right to organise
The New Deal for Working People was quite clear: “Labour will also strengthen trade unions’ right of entry to workplaces to organise, meet and represent their members and potential members, and to contact remote workers … by introducing a transparent framework and clear rules …”
However, this has been downgraded in the Bill to a commitment that a “qualifying trade union” may make an “access request” to the employer for any of the “access purposes.” If the employer consistently denies the access request the union may make a complaint to the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC) which, if upheld, could result in a financial award being made in favour of the union.
So, there has been a transition in the four years since the green paper was published from “trade unions’ right of entry” to trade unions may make an “access request,” which if denied may result in a financial penalty against the employer, not, most importantly, any sort of enforcement notice allowing the union into the workplace.
On the question of trade union recognition New Deal for Working People was clear: “Labour will simplify the law around statutory recognition thresholds, so that working people have a realistic and meaningful right to organise through trade unions.”
Employment lawyers Brodies say that the provisions of the Bill will:

● Reduce the 10 per cent membership threshold for the CAC to accept a trade union application with a test of anywhere between 2 per cent and 10 per cent;

 ● Remove the requirement for a union to demonstrate to the CAC that there is likely to be majority support for recognition; and

● Remove the 40 per cent support threshold from recognition ballots.

However, all of the changes set out in the Bill still require a ballot of the workforce (the bargaining unit) which invites the employer to hire union-busting consultants or engage in other hostile campaigning that may remain on the lawful side of unfair practices but seek to thwart the union recognition ballot, as happened recently at Amazon.
Labour, in New Deal for Working People, did raise the possibly of automatic recognition “where 50 per cent or more workers in a bargaining unit are members.” Provision for automatic recognition, not via the CAC, is absent in the Bill.
The Bill, when law, will repeal the intrusive powers given to the certification officer by the 2016 Act. However, there has been no movement on state interference in union rule books introduced in the 1980s that specifies how and when trade union general secretaries and executive council members are elected. This issue was not addressed in New Deal for Working People.
Although repeal of the CO’s intrusive powers may gain some points for the UK on the ILO’s Global Index it is arguable that some breaches of the right of freedom of association will still exist after the Bill becomes law and the Bill’s provisions on union organising are a significant weakening of the proposals as first set out in New Deal for Working People.

Right to collective bargaining
In the New Deal for Working People Labour could not have been clearer about its intention to introduce statutory support for sector-wide collective bargaining through the rollout of fair pay agreements.
“Fair pay agreements will be negotiated through sectoral collective bargaining, reversing the decade’s long decline in collective bargaining coverage. Worker representatives and employer representatives would be brought together to negotiate fair pay agreements that establish minimum terms and conditions, which would be binding on all employers and workers in the sector.”
The precipitous decline in the coverage of collective bargaining, as identified in New Deal for Working People, is closely linked with the decline in the share of GDP allocated to wages and salaries in the neoliberal period. Workers are indeed getting poorer. These two phenomena are not merely correlated; the suppression of the former is a causal factor of the latter. This link has been conclusively shown over a decade ago by Professors Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in their book The Spirit Level. This crucial fact would have been well known to those who drafted the Employment Rights Bill.
Yet all the Bill proposes is an adult social care negotiating body and a school support staff negotiating body, the latter being a partial commitment from New Deal for Working People, “Labour will reinstate the school support staff negotiating body. This body will be tasked with establishing a national terms and conditions handbook, training, career progression routes, and fair pay for support staff.”
But in finality, it is the secretary of state who retains executive authority over these bodies, as the Institute for Employment Rights points out, “where there is a failure to agree, the SoS has the power to assume the functions of the body and to impose a settlement regardless of the wishes of the parties.” In short, these two bodies do not therefore constitute collective bargaining arrangements for these sectors, not least because the Bill expressly says they don’t.
As for the rest of the economy there is no provision in the Bill to roll out statutory support for sectoral collective bargaining: it is completely absent. The use of collective bargaining to raise the living standards of working people is not within the parameters of this Bill. Strange, as collective bargaining is the one measure that could have been used to achieve the sentiment of the tagline — Making Work Pay.
Although it may be said there is no legal impediment to collective bargaining, (the UK received no negative points on the ILO Global Rights Index for this topic), what is being proposed in the Bill is a very long way short of what was proposed in New Deal for Working People. It is clear from the decline in collective bargaining coverage in recent history that stronger legal measures – and the political signal introducing such measures sends — is needed.

Right to strike
The Conservatives’ Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2022 that sought to allow employment agencies to provide labour to break a strike was struck down as unlawful by the High Court.
The two other pieces of anti-union law introduced during the 2010-2024 period are the Trade Union Act 2016 and the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023. The Employment Rights Bill, when law, will repeal all of the 2023 Act and the majority of the 2016 Act, but as noted above the 2016 Act builds on anti-union legal framework established by the Conservatives in the 1980s and 1990s.
The New Deal for Working People was unambiguous in its commitment to restore a right to strike, stating that, “Labour is committed to repealing anti-trade union legislation which removes workers’ rights, including the Trade Union Act 2016, in order to remove unnecessary restrictions on trade union activity.”
“The laws regulating industrial action should ensure that UK law complies in every respect with the international obligations ratified by the UK, including those of the International Labour Organisation, and the European Social Charter, as reiterated in the Trade and Co-operation Agreement with the European Union.”
Complex balloting arrangements that need to be conducted by post before going on strike, the notice period to be given to the employer, having no right to take solidarity strike action and more will remain on the Statute Book after the Employment Rights Bill becomes law. Therefore, we must assume that the UK will still figure in a negative way in the ITUC’s Global Rights Index.
For there to be an effective right to strike in Britain, essential for the proper operation of collective bargaining, all the Tory anti-union laws starting from the 1980 Act need to be repealed and replaced with a new framework consistent with the international norms identified in New Deal for Working People. The Employment Rights Bill does not rise to that challenge.
Next steps
Many of the other provisions of the Employment Rights Bill — ban on zero hours, action on fire and rehire, day one rights — may improve the lot of many at work. It does not go far enough in these areas, but is a sad indicator of how insecure and precarious employment has become for millions that it will quite likely make a difference, including with the announcement by the Deputy Prime Minister that the government will introduce amendments in the Lords to beef up the provisions on fire and rehire and other measures as well.
It is clear however that the government will not support amendments being introduced by Lord Hendy KC that seek to introduce sector-wide collective bargaining and a right to take sympathetic strike action.
What the Employment Rights Bill does not do, which New Deal for Working People made a start in doing, is to promote trade union power at work. This power was legislated away, alongside deindustrialisation and neoliberal ideological hegemony. It is possible to legislate it back. It is only trade union power at work that will materially improve the lot of working people as a class.
Our short-term objective must be to launch a campaign for a Trade Union and Workers’ Rights Bill, known in short hand as Employment Rights #2 Bill, to pick up all that was in New Deal for Working People and the further rights that working people need in this world of crisis and turmoil that are not in the current Employment Rights Bill and to correct the Bill’s deficiencies.
Unite has set the ball rolling with its policy conference last week calling for an Employment Rights #2 Bill. Let’s start to roll back the billionaire coup against democracy.

Adrian Weir is the assistant secretary of the Campaign for Trade Union Freedom; follow the campaign on Bluesky @unionfreedom.bsky.social.

Download the 20205 ITUC’s Global Rights Index.