Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay: Delivering A New Deal for Working People

Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay: Delivering A New Deal for Working People

Labour’s plan will make work pay. We’ll boost wages, make work more secure and support working people to thrive – delivering a genuine living wage, banning exploitative zero hour contracts, and ending fire and rehire.

Labour will back working people to take their voice back, improve their terms and conditions and ensuring protections at work are fit for the world today.

Labour’s plan to make work pay is a core part of our mission to grow Britain’s economy and raise living standards across the country. 

If Britain votes for change in the General Election on Thursday 4 July, a Labour Government will need to hit the ground running. That is why we will introduce legislation in Parliament within 100 days of entering government.

Labour’s plan to make work pay will ensure more people stay in work, make work more family-friendly and improve living standards, putting more money in working people’s pockets to spend, boosting economic growth, resilience and conditions for innovation. Stronger trade unions and collective bargaining will be key to tackling problems of insecurity, inequality, discrimination, enforcement and low pay.

The last Labour government lifted basic minimum rights in the workplace by introducing the National Minimum Wage, the 48-hour working week, 28-days paid holiday, parental leave, and greater protection from unfair dismissal. The Tories opposed every one of them. 

But today they are the cornerstone of our working lives. Labour, working with businesses and trade unions, has transformed the world of work before, and we can do so again. A step change is needed in how working people exercise control over their working lives, and businesses need urgent action to address our poor productivity.

Labour is pro-worker and pro-business, and we will work in partnership with trade unions and business to deliver our New Deal.

What will Labour do for working people?

Deliver a genuine living wage 

The creation of the National Minimum Wage was one of the greatest achievements of the last Labour government and has lifted many working people out of poverty, and narrowed the pay gap between men and women, older and younger workers and between places. 

The next Labour government would go further and make sure the minimum wage is a real living wage that people can live on. 

To achieve this, we would change the Low Pay Commission’s remit so that alongside median wages and economic conditions, the minimum wage will for the first time reflect the need for pay to take into account the cost of living.

We will remove the discriminatory age bands to ensure every adult worker benefits, and we will work with the Single Enforcement Body and HMRC and ensure they have the powers necessary to make sure our genuine living wage is properly enforced, including penalties for non-compliance.

Labour will work with the Single Enforcement Body and HMRC to ensure the National Minimum Wage regulations on travel time in sectors with multiple working sites is enforced and that workers’ contracts reflect the law. More widely, we will work with the Low Pay Commission, trade unions, employers, the Council for Economic Growth and more to address the ongoing issue of low pay.

Make work secure 

Labour will embrace technological advancements in a way that ensures both workers and our economy benefit. We’ll help ensure workers can benefit from flexible working, including opportunities for flexi-time contracts and hours that better accommodate school terms where they are not currently available, by making flexible working the default from day one for all workers, except where it is not reasonably feasible.

Support working people 

​​Labour will update trade union legislation, so it is fit for a modern economy, removing unnecessary restrictions on trade union activity and ensuring industrial relations are based around good faith negotiation and bargaining.

This will end the Conservatives’ scorched-earth approach to industrial relations, ushering in a new partnership of cooperation between trade unions, employers and government and putting us in line with high-growth economies that benefit from more cooperation and less disruption.

In 2022 and 2023 we lost more days to strike in any year since the 1980s, whilst we lost many more days to strikes than competitors like Germany, Spain and Norway.

Ban exploitative zero hour contracts 

Labour will end ‘one sided’ flexibility and ensure all jobs provide a baseline level of security and predictability, banning exploitative zero hours contracts and ensuring everyone has the right to have a contract that reflects the number of hours they regularly work, based on a 12-week reference period.

End fire and rehire

​​Labour will end the scourges of ‘fire and rehire’ and ‘fire and replace’ that leave working people at the mercy of bullying threats. We will reform the law to provide effective remedies against abuse and replace the inadequate statutory code brought in by the Government, with a strengthened code of practice. 

Ending fire and rehire means workers can be safe in the knowledge that terms and conditions negotiated in good faith can’t be ripped up under threat of dismissal.

Workers will be able to plan and save for the future with security in their pay and terms. Good employers will also know that they will not be undercut by competitors who only engage staff under threat of the sack.

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