Leaving the EU means workers’ rights are under threat – we all know that, right?

Whether they get the chop from a Tory government on Friday or further down the road is neither here nor there in the larger scheme of things.

As the article points out, you won’t be able to rely on the courts to help you if your rights come under attack – because you probably won’t be able to afford a legal battle.

Legal Aid has been slashed, remember? By ‘Vote Leave’ poster boy Michael Gove.

The TUC has published today a legal opinion from prominent legal expert Michael Ford QC – Employment Silk of 2015 – which warns of years of chaos as a post-Brexit government re-regulates British employment law. The advice he has given the TUC lists the workplace rights which are most under threat from Brexit, and gives a chilling insight into the legal environment likely if Britain votes to leave the EU on 23 June.

The rights most at risk would be:
•working time rules, including limits on working hours and rules on the amount of holiday pay a worker is entitled to;
•Transfer of Undertakings (TUPE), i.e. the EU-derived protections to the terms and conditions of workers at an organisation or service that is transferred or outsourced to a new employer;
•protections for agency workers and other ‘atypical’ workers, such as part-time workers;
•current levels of compensation for discrimination of all kinds, including equal pay awards and age discrimination; and
•rights for workers’ representatives to be consulted if major changes are planned that will change people’s jobs or result in redundancies (as have been used in recent major announcements in the steel industry).

But other workers’ rights would not necessarily be safe, and workers would be left with only the UK courts to enforce those rights that remain.

Source: Forty years of progress on rights at risk for workers if Britain Brexits

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