Jeremy Corbyn – yes, him again – has been banging on about the protection of workers’ rights when and if the UK leaves the EU. You can’t blame him, can you? After all, our membership of the EU has ensured that workers have minimal, very basic rights. Even when the country goes off a cliff, at least the workers will be protected, right? I’m not so sure.
I have 45 years of experience in the workplace and many workers have very few rights at all. Those who work for the few remaining manufacturing industries are well looked after by the trade unions. Generally speaking, these workers enjoy good levels of pay and good working conditions. Yet here’s a thing: the easy majority of people are not in a trade union. Many have barely any rights at all.
Take care workers. I have come across plenty of them in recent years and I’d be interested to learn just which workers’ rights they will retain. Many of them are not paid for travelling between clients. They only get paid when they are actually with someone. One told me that this would often turn her ten hour day into a 12 or 13 hour day. Another I met recently was about to take her first day off in three weeks. And how much did they earn? £7.83 an hour. Some had set hours, some had zero hours contracts. All were totally dedicated to their clients and enjoyed their work. In terms of rights, I couldn’t think of any they enjoyed.
It’s the same thing almost everywhere else. The third sector, the service industry, shop workers, fruit pickers – everyone. The employer would tell them what to do and that would be it. Annual leave is always hard to take at a time when you want to take it. Hundreds of thousands have gone from the dole queues to fake self-employment where they earn significantly less than the national minimum wage. These workers stand to lose even more when the act of self-harm that is Brexit takes down their living standards. They will have no protection. It will be tragic to watch.
Corbyn is probably too stupid to realise that when he harps on about workers’ rights he doesn’t allow for the many millions who have none. He probably imagines the big manufacturing areas where shop stewards demand the attention of managers on behalf of union members and doesn’t even think about the people who provide dignity to the most vulnerable. I cringe when he goes on about workers’ rights.
The truth is that British workers have less rights than virtually any other workers in western Europe. It is far easier for employers to sack people in our country than it is abroad, our conditions are often well below than those enjoyed by our foreign cousins. No one works harder for the lowest level of rewards.
In any event, Corbyn speaks with forked tongue. He is a disaster socialist who sees the impending catastrophe of Brexit as an opportunity to impose his version of socialism on one country. And I doubt that, surrounded by his middle and upper class comrades in the ivory towers of Islington, he has the first idea of how ordinary people live their lives.
A Brexit deal with May in exchange for protecting workers’ rights? Don’t make me laugh. Most of us have little or no rights, beyond the bare minimum provided by the law. The world of Labour’s leader is nothing like the one I’ve come from.
