Paddy Lillis – Usdaw General Secretary says: “Tomorrow’s King’s Speech is a last chance for the Government to demonstrate they understand the depth of the cost of living crisis, something they have failed to do so far. We are calling for them to focus on improving employment rights, which is a manifesto promise they have so far failed to deliver, to ensure that workers have the dignity of decent pay and put an end to insecure employment.
“Labour has already pledged to deliver the new deal Usdaw has long campaigned for. If the Government again fails to bring forward their promised employment bill, it will be yet another demonstration that only Labour has the policies and ideas that can put the country back on track and deliver the change our members desperately need.”
The next Labour Government will deliver a new deal that includes:
- Making work pay with a genuine living wage that people can actually live on.
- Banning zero-hours contracts.
- Ending fire and rehire.
- Giving workers basic rights from day one.
- Going further and faster in closing the gender pay gap.
- Making work more family friendly.
- Tackling sexual harassment.
- Ensuring that unions can stand up for their members.
- Boosting collective bargaining, to improve workers’ pay, terms and conditions.
Paddy Lillis continued: “We are facing an epidemic of retail crime, with police recorded incidents of shoplifting having increased by 25% in the last year. That is hugely concerning because shoplifting is not a victimless crime, theft from shops has long been a major flashpoint for violence and abuse against shopworkers. Conservative MPs repeatedly opposed extending the Scottish protection of workers law and the Government has so far only fiddled around the edges by changing sentencing policy.
“Much of our concerns around growing retail crime is about underfunding of the police and getting the offenders to court in the first place. There are too few officers patrolling the streets and our members tell me they very rarely see uniformed officers in their stores. The policy of issuing fixed penalty notices for thefts under £200 leads to too few of these crimes being investigated and prosecuted. Labour has committed to give shopworkers ‘Freedom From Fear’ and deliver on our campaign objectives. Tomorrow we’ll see if the Government can match those plans.”
The next Labour Government is committed to:
- 13,000 more neighbourhood police with guaranteed patrols in town centres,
- Respect Orders to ban repeat offenders.
- A standalone offence for assaulting a worker serving the public, as already exists in Scotland.
- Ending the £200 threshold for investigating and prosecuting shop theft.
Notes for editors:
Usdaw (Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers) is the UK's fifth biggest trade union with over 350,000 members. Most Usdaw members work in the retail sector, but the union also has many members in transport, distribution, food manufacturing, chemical industry and other trades
www.usdaw.org.uk
Usdaw’s Freedom from Fear Campaign seeks to prevent violence, threats and abuse against workers by engaging the public, shopworkers and the Government.
www.usdaw.org.uk/Campaigns/Freedom-From-Fear
Protection of Workers (Retail and Age-restricted Goods and Services) (Scotland) Act 2021: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2021/6
For Usdaw press releases visit: http://www.usdaw.org.uk/news and you can follow us on Twitter
@UsdawUnion