Image: Jess Hurd
Polling conducted by UNISON ahead of the general election showed that more than three quarters of members felt that the country was heading in the wrong direction. They were crying out for change. And as we saw on 4 July, they were ready to do something about that, by voting in a Labour government with a massive 172-seat majority.
The King’s Speech, delivered to Parliament less than two weeks later, on 17 July, set out very clearly what the change members voted for looks like.
This is the most interventionist and class-conscious government since the 1970s. And nothing demonstrates it more clearly than the commitment to introduce an employment bill to implement the New Deal for Working People within 100 days. The stated goal is to create a new partnership between business, trade unions and working people, which is rightly seen as fundamental to the government’s mission to get growth going again.
The employment bill, covering England, Scotland and Wales, will include the legislation necessary to deliver the New Deal. This includes commitments to ban exploitative zero-hours contracts, end fire and rehire, and give workers day one rights to parental leave, sick pay, flexible working and protection from unfair dismissal.
The bill also promises to make good on UNISON’s and the wider trade union movement’s desire to see the minimum service levels legislation scrapped and improvement to the statutory recognition process and union access to workplaces. Collective bargaining is given a real boost too, and UNISON members will see the fruits of this through a new fair pay agreement in social care and the reinstatement of the School Support Staff Negotiating Body.
But the programme set out in the King’s Speech does not stop there. It includes over 40 measures, many of which will affect UNION members, their jobs and their communities.
The government will publish an equality (race and disability) bill, enshrining in law the right to equal pay for Black and disabled workers.
New laws will kickstart Labour’s Green Prosperity Plan, creating 650,000 good jobs across the country, and the government will establish a new state-owned energy company, GB Energy.
There are new measures to turbocharge housebuilding and deliver more affordable housing, and a renters’ rights bill to protect renters, including ending no-fault evictions.
Public transport receives a boost. The better buses bill will improve community control over the franchising system and remove the ban on publicly owned bus companies. The railways bill will finally bring our railways back into public hands, after years of campaigning.
The water (special measures) bill will strengthen the power of the water regulator, to begin the work of cleaning up our seas, rivers and lakes.
A crime and policing bill will seek to rebuild neighbourhood policing by bringing forward arrangements to get police and community support officers (PCSOs) back onto the beat.
It is clear that the new government has hit the ground running. After 14 years of austerity and chaos, we are entering a new era.
In the introduction to the government briefing paper on the King’s Speech, Keir Starmer acknowledges that rebuilding the country will not happen overnight, that the challenges we face require determined, patient work and serious solutions, rather than easy, populist answers.
The bills that have been set out this week show a new government determined to get started and deliver the change that UNISON members were so desperate to see.
