Theresa May Is Trying To Pull Wool Over Our Eyes On Our Post-Brexit Rights

The PM's deal is bad for working people, their jobs and their rights – we must not be taken in
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The Prime Minister isn’t being honest with working people about what will happen to their rights after Brexit.

While she’s offered more warm words and spin this week – both in her letter to Jeremy Corbyn and her statement to the House of Commons – she’s no closer to providing the guarantees working people need on their jobs and rights.

She hasn’t changed her deal, she’s refused to budge on her red lines, and she’s deliberately running down the clock, trying to bully MPs with the threat of no deal.

At the same time, she’s tried to cast herself and her party as champions of workers’ rights. Well, we’re not buying it.

This is the party that introduced the Trade Union Act, deliberately undermining working people’s ability to come together and stand up for their rights. The party that introduced employment tribunal fees, cutting off low-paid workers’ access to justice. The government that won’t even ban zero-hours contracts, despite the fact that they’re ruining working people’s lives. And this week, contracted out cleaners at the government’s own business department have been forced to strike for the real living wage. This is hardly a “proud tradition of leading the way on workers’ rights”, as the prime minister claims.

The reality is that the prime minister’s concern for workers’ rights only appeared when she thought there was something in it for her. Trade unions have called for inclusive discussions on Brexit from the beginning, but instead we were invited in at a minute to midnight, as she tried to shore up her deal after a devastating defeat.

But the truth is that the government hasn’t offered any substantive change to the deal.

We’ve been clear all along that working people need a binding, long-term guarantee that their rights will be protected after Brexit and will keep pace with the rights of workers across Europe into the future.

At this late stage in negotiations, the best way to achieve this is to write protections into the Brexit deal and agree to stick by single market and customs union rules. That’s the sort of shift the prime minister needs to make if she’s serious about bringing home a deal that delivers for working people.

But ultimately, when it counts, she isn’t willing to stand up to the hardliners of the ERG and DUP, or to put working people’s interests ahead of those of her own party.

And now — with her vague offer of flimsy domestic legislation — she’s asking us to entrust our rights at work to a Tory-dominated parliament. That’s not a compromise, it’s a bad joke.

While even government ministers seem uncertain of exactly what new legislation would cover, all the indications are that it would go nowhere near replacing the protections currently provided by European legislation. And crucially, whatever Theresa May might do now, there’s nothing to stop future Tory governments from ripping up domestic law, which is exactly what the hardliners have said they aim to do.

Of course, the rights and protections UK workers currently enjoy weren’t gifted to us, they were won through generations of trade union campaigning, and unions across Europe working together to achieve that level playing field.

And our ambitions for working people don’t stop with a decent Brexit deal. We’ll keep fighting for more and better rights for workers in the UK, for great jobs, for the new deal that will ensure Britain really does lead the way.

Sticking with the rules of the single market and customs union won’t stop future governments from making radical improvements to working life. It simply provides us with a solid foundation to build on. And it ensures that no future government can take away the rights we already have.

The prime minister is trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes with her warm words and half measures. But we won’t be taken in. This is still a bad deal for working people’s jobs and rights.

Frances O’Grady is general secretary of the TUC