After embracing ‘fire and rehire’, Labour is now embracing ‘zero hours’ contracts too
Starmer and Rayner: we were told they were ‘taking the knee’ in a publicity stunt for Black Lives Matter but this image could equally be taken as them kneeling before employers’ group the Confederation of British Industry and vowing that they will never allow the Party of the Workers to actually stand up for workers’ rights, prevent exploitation, and/or seek acceptable pay and working conditions. They are a danger to you.
Keir Starmer (and his deputy, Angela Rayner) really are dragging the Labour Party into the mire, aren’t they?
Already they have hypocritically launched a policy to abolish odious ‘fire and rehire’ employment practices, ignoring the fact that they are carrying out such an exercise, within Labour, at the moment.
And now Rayner has announced that the party is reversing its policy on ‘zero hours’ contracts so that employers will be allowed to continue exploiting workers by forcing them to work only when it suits bosses, without access to employment conditions including sick pay and holidays.
So passes the Party of the Workers: not in struggle but in subversion by fake socialists who belong in the Conservative Party.
Way back in 2016, former leader Jeremy Corbyn announced that under him, Labour would abolish ‘zero hours’ contracts. He said a Labour government would legislate to ensure that all employees be given guaranteed hours which must be specified and written into a contract – bringing an end to zero-hour contracts.
If an employer wanted workers to work beyond those hours, they would have to specify the length of additional work along with a reason for asking.
An employer would also have to give reasonable compensation, akin to an “on-call” payment to an employee, for agreeing to make themselves available for additional work, whether they were ultimately asked to do so or not.
Now Angela Rayner has swept all that away.
Asked on the BBC’s Today programme if Labour still opposed ‘zero hours’ contracts, Rayner refused to give a straight answer, and ended up saying that the party now opposes “exploitation” of them:
Mishal Husain: Are u against zero hours contracts?
Angela Rayner: We want everyone to have security..
MH: Are u against 0 hours
AR: This is about healthy balance..
MH: Are u against them?
AR: We're against the exploitation of them
AR is unable to spell out Labour policy #r4today— MG (@Gregom10) July 28, 2021
Is Labour against Zero Hour Contacts? Angela Rayner is asked. Folks, she said a lot of stuff but none of it was no.
— Gyll King Post Skip Diplomacy (@GyllKing) July 28, 2021
That can only mean Labour does not oppose ‘zero hours’ contracts any more. It is a wholesale endorsement of worker exploitation by employers.
It means that, in a few short words, Angela Rayner betrayed Labour’s reason for existing.
Considering the party’s contradictory attitude to ‘fire and rehire’, commenters and commentators have only one conclusion to draw: that Labour has changed policy because it intends to use ‘zero hours’ contracts itself:
https://twitter.com/eliovsb/status/1420282875241508867
If Labour wants people to work for the party in the run-up to a general election under such conditions, then Labour won’t help working people if it is elected.
Nobody at all should want to work for Labour in such a situation.
We should all spurn Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and all their right-wing cuckoo cronies, as we would spurn a pack of rabid dogs.
In the long term, the rabid dogs would be less harmful to us.
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Labour is finished in England, In Wales they can rebrand as Llafur Cymru and prosper. Too many people will not forgive the Lib/Dems for past misjudgements yet they are blindly voting Tory. In England there is a need for a new party that is more central in its politics.
Additional info from a source you trust
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2021/07/28/nationalisation-is-possible-when-its-in-defence-of-nukes/
OMG (as the saying goes) how the heck has she suddenly. Well sort of changed?? complete reversal of ethics?? I’m dumbfounded I really am??
There is no principle left for them to betray. Actively doing this to their own employees takes the biscuit.
They might win over Tory Wets but they are going to lose all of their own core support doing this. They are depending on ‘who else are they going to vote for’ The Scottish Labour Party behaved like this and people, like me, who had voted for them their entire adult lives in Council, Regional Council (later Scottish Parliament) Westminster and Euro elections switched their support and didn’t come back. If the public feels there is a viable left of centre party apart from Labour then Labour will be finished. As it is I can’t see them getting into office at the next GE and that is despite Austerity, Brexit, COVID, this government’s corruption and far right leaning and the fatigue of having the Tories in power for 14 years. That’s pretty much an open goal for Labour, there’s loads of time to get a good manifesto together for the GE, setting policies now of course and to knock spots off Boris at PMQs. Starmer can’t do any of this..