POLL: What do you think of Labour’s plan for employment reform?


John McDonnell has outlined Labour’s proposed employment measures to bolster the strength of unions and transform the gig economy in a speech to the Trades Union Congress.

If you’ve managed to miss the details, here’s a short video about the headlines:

And here‘s The Guardian with some of the finer details:

“A Labour government would ban zero-hours contracts, repeal the Trade Union Act, clamp down on bogus self-employment, end private finance initiatives and set up a department for employment to implement the policies, he said. There would be a particular emphasis on workers in the gig economy.

Workers in jobs with flexible hours and short-term contracts could be given similar rights to those in permanent work, including eligibility for sick pay, parental pay and similar benefits, he said.

Government contracts would only be given to firms that allowed collective bargaining and a Labour government would relaunch employee ownership funds, under which staff at larger companies would receive shares in order to give them a stake in the profits and management of their firms.

McDonnell also repeated a promise that Labour would spend £500bn over a decade to fix Britain’s crumbling infrastructure.

This would include road and rail, digital, research and development and alternative energy sources, he said, adding that the £500bn figure was supported by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), with whom Labour was working to develop the proposals.”

That’s fine – but are these plans any good?

Let’s have a poll:

[polldaddy poll=10105619]

Feel free to use the ‘comment’ column to detail the reasons for your response.

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9 Comments

  1. Growing Flame September 12, 2018 at 7:56 pm - Reply

    These proposals are probably nothing special to a lot of Social democratic parties in the rest of Europe, but in Right-Wing Britain they sound down-right revolutionary.

  2. MARK BEVIS September 12, 2018 at 8:40 pm - Reply

    Good with the caveat that Labour policy is still wedded to unlimited economic growth on a finite planet, so is doomed to fail.
    However, a planned economy as apposed to a neo-liberal one does then give the chance of the country doing the mobilisation necessary to mitigate the worst excesses of climate catastrophe and species annihilation.

  3. trev September 12, 2018 at 8:40 pm - Reply

    Why would anyone think such proposals are bad? I would like to know what Labour’s plans are for Social Security and the Welfare State, will they scrap Universal Credit, remove Conditionality, introduce an unconditional Basic Income, lower State Pension age ?

  4. joanna September 12, 2018 at 11:39 pm - Reply

    Good is a Huge underestimate, why wouldn’t anyone go for this, unless of course they are Big Fat Tory Slave Owners, because like it or not That is Exacttly what they are!!! Wages are just for show but are essentailly Useless!!!

  5. Jeffrey Davies September 13, 2018 at 5:49 am - Reply

    oh dear the greedie ones will do all they can to stop a labour gov but without corbyn our children are doomed to this lot of greedie people who don’t care only about themselves

  6. Barry Davies September 13, 2018 at 10:00 am - Reply

    Sounds like a return to the rights we had in 1972, before EU law allowed consecutive governments to water them down.

    • Mike Sivier September 15, 2018 at 1:13 am - Reply

      Yet again: No.

      It’s a return to the rights we had before successive neoliberal governments took them away from us in order to further enrich the few at the expense of the many. The EU genuinely doesn’t come into it.

  7. nmac064 September 14, 2018 at 8:31 am - Reply

    Let’s just hope that Labour soon get the opportunity to put them into practice.

  8. outtheredude September 14, 2018 at 5:11 pm - Reply

    With many employment incentives for employers now firmly on the side of piecemeal, part-time, temporary work, due to a significant part by the near total lack of virtually all employment rights for workers caught in such employment, it’s about time something was done about this.

    Furthermore, with workers in continually precarious employment now also having to sign on to Draconian Universal Credit as well, making their lives even harder than they already are, anything to give such workers a real chance of even surviving employment, for both themselves and their families, is especially welcome.

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