Received from: NASUWT
Congress notes the government’s commitment to strengthening employment rights through the Employment Rights Act and recognises the opportunity to reset the balance in UK workplaces.
Congress believes that while the Act represents important progress, it does not go far enough to address longstanding imbalances in labour law or to fully restore workers’ rights.
Congress further believes that the effectiveness of the Act will depend on robust implementation through clear and enforceable regulations, proper resourcing of enforcement bodies and meaningful engagement with trade unions.
Congress is concerned that without this, legislative change risks failing to deliver real improvements in workplace practice.
Congress is further concerned that the continued operation of the 50 per cent industrial action ballot turnout threshold places an unnecessary and undemocratic barrier on workers seeking to exercise their rights collectively.
Congress believes that linking the removal of the 50 per cent threshold to the introduction of electronic balloting is unjustified and risks delaying the restoration of fundamental trade union freedoms.
Congress therefore calls on the General Council to:
i. campaign for the immediate removal of the 50 per cent ballot threshold and oppose any linkage between the removal of the threshold and the implementation of e-balloting
ii. lobby government to ensure the Employment Rights Act is implemented effectively through strong, enforceable regulations, developed alongside trade unions
iii. campaign for a second Employment Rights Bill that repeals all anti-trade union laws, introduces genuine sectoral collective bargaining, strengthens rights for all workers and addresses remaining gaps in employment protections and enforcement.
NASUWT
AMENDMENT
Insert new ‘iii.’ as follows and renumber accordingly
“campaign to ensure the full provisions and maximum possible protections of the ERA, including the Mandatory Seafarers Charter, apply to seafarers on all short sea international ferry routes from UK ports, including organising a campaigning event with affiliates next year coinciding with the fifth anniversary of the P&O Ferries scandal.”
National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers
AMENDMENT
After paragraph 2, add as an extension to that paragraph: “It also fails to re-establish an effective industrial relations framework, having abandoned the principally significant New Deal for Working People promise, to restore multi-employer collective bargaining, in favour of complicated legislation that will struggle to attend to sectoral complexities.”
Equity