Labour has partially rowed back from its policy on boosting rights for those working in the gig economy as it seeks to head off Conservative attacks on its approach to business in the run-up to the general election.
Angela Rayner, the party’s deputy leader, whose portfolio covers workers’ rights, said on Friday morning that Labour still intended to ban zero-hour contracts, tackle bogus self-employment and end qualifying periods for rights in the “biggest levelling-up of workers’ rights in decades”.
“Far from watering it down, we will now set out in detail how we will implement it and tackle the Tories’ scaremongering,” she added.
However, the party’s policy forum in July changed the wording of the pledges on workers’ rights to suggest there may be more flexibility in its approach.
Labour had been planning to create a single “worker” status for all but the genuinely self-employed, ensuring the same rights for everyone regardless of sector, wage or type of contract.
The forum agreed last month to consult on this policy after entering government to create “a simpler framework” that differentiates between workers and the genuinely self-employed in a way that would “properly capture the breadth of employment relationships in the UK” as well as ensuring workers can still “benefit from flexible working where they choose to do so”.
Labour also tweaked its plan for “day one” workers’ rights such as sick pay, parental leave and unfair dismissal to say that this would not prevent “probationary periods with fair and transparent rules and processes”.
The changes, first reported by the Financial Times, are supported by a number of trade unions and their organising body, the TUC. However, Unite, the party’s biggest donor, is believed to have given the new wording a “thumbs down”.
The national policy forum is a process that examines possible policies and drafts wording from which Labour forms its next manifesto.
On Friday morning, Stephen Morgan, a shadow education minister, said he could not comment on the policy process before the party’s manifesto but made clear it would be “pro-worker and pro-business”.
“We have got a really good relationship with business now, we can be trusted to run our economy and to run our country, and we have got a set of policies which are pro-worker too,” he said.
Rayner tweeted the party’s policy paper on day one workers’ rights, saying it “will be the biggest levelling-up of workers’ rights in decades, providing security, treating workers fairly, and paying a decent wage”.
She said the party would “tackle insecure work by banning zero-hours contracts, ending fire and rehire and ending qualifying periods for basic rights, which currently leave working people waiting up to two years for basic protections”.
Rayner added: “We’ll make work more family friendly by making flexible working a day one right except where it isn’t reasonably feasible, strengthening protections for pregnant women and by urgently reviewing parental leave.
“And we’ll make sure work actually pays with a genuine living wage that covers the cost of living, ensuring fair tips, boosting collective rights – and by speeding up the closing of the gender pay gap.”
