Tackle Poverty and Inequality

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Work

Work

• Eradicate in-work poverty in our first term by tackling the structural causes of poverty and inequality, such as low pay and high living costs, while raising the floor provided by our social safety net
  
• Cap the total amount that can be paid in overdraft fees or interest on a loan
  
• Introduce a Real Living Wage of at least £10 per hour for all workers aged 16 and over
  
• Use savings to public finances to help small businesses manage the extra cost of the living wage
  
• Give workers a stake in the companies they work for by requiring large companies to set up Inclusive Ownership Funds (IOFs)
  
• Up to 10% of a company will be owned collectively by employees
• Dividend payments distributed equally among all, capped at £500 a year
• The cap will rise to ensure that no more than 25% of dividends raised by IOFs are redistributed in this way
• Explore other innovative ways of responding to low pay, including a pilot of Universal Basic Income
  
• Self-employed people will benefit from a broad range of policies, from free childcare, full-fibre broadband to face-to-face lending and business support through our Post Bank
  
• Seek to develop tailored support and protections for the self- employed, including: collective income protection insurance schemes, annual income assessments for those on Universal Credit, and better access to mortgages and pension schemes
  
• tackle late payments that leave small businesses and the self-employed waiting months to be paid, including banning late payers from public procurement
  

Ministry for Employment Rights

• Transform people’s lives for the better through the biggest extension of workers’ rights in history
  
• Give working people a voice at the Cabinet table by establishing a Ministry for Employment Rights
  
• Start to roll out sectoral collective bargaining across the economy
  
• Bring workers and employers together to agree legal minimum standards on a wide range of issues, such as pay and working hours
  
• Sectoral collective bargaining will increase wages and reduce inequality
  
• Sectoral collective bargaining will also stop good employers being undercut by bad employers
• Give everyone full rights from day one on the job
• Strengthen protections for whistleblowers and rights against unfair dismissal for all workers
• End bogus self-employment and creating a single status of ‘worker’ for everyone apart from those genuinely self-employed in business on their own account
  
• Introduce a legal right to collective consultation on the implementation of new technology in workplaces
  
• Ban zero-hour contracts and strengthening the law so that those who work regular hours for more than 12 weeks will have a right to a regular contract
  
• Increase wages through sectoral collective bargaining
  
• Require breaks during shifts to be paid
  
• Require cancelled shifts to be paid and proper notice for changes in hours
  
• Give all workers the right to flexible working
  
• Extend statutory maternity pay from nine to 12 months
  
• Double paternity leave from two weeks to four and increase statutory paternity pay
  
• Introduce statutory bereavement leave, guarantee workers time off to grieve the loss of close family members or following miscarriage
  
• Introduce four new bank holidays celebrating our four patron saints’ days
  
• Review family-friendly employment rights, including rights to respond to family emergencies
  
• Require employers to devise and implement plans to eradicate the gender pay gap – and pay inequalities underpinned by race and/or disability – or face fines
  
• Require employers to maintain workplaces free of harassment, including harassment by third parties
  
• Increase protection against redundancy for people wherever they work
  
• Give statutory rights to equalities representatives
  
• Set up a Royal Commission to bring health (including mental health) and safety legislation up to date
  
• Ensure that public-facing workers are protected by toughening the law against abuse and violence
  
• Banning unpaid internships
  
• Allow trade unions to use secure electronic and workplace ballots
  
• Remove unnecessary restrictions on industrial action.
  
• Strengthen and enforce trade unions’ right of entry to workplaces to organise, meet and represent their members and to recruit
  
• Ban union-busting, strengthen protection of trade union representatives against unfair dismissal and union members from intimidation, harassment, threats and blacklisting
  
• Repeal anti-trade union legislation including the Trade Union Act 2016 and create new rights and freedoms for trade unions to help them win a better deal for working people
  
• Simplify the law around union recognition
  
• Give union reps adequate time off for union duties
  
• Develop collective income- protection insurance schemes for the self-employed
  
• Introduce a maximum workplace temperature to protect workers and require employers to take counteracting measures
  
• Bring UK law into line with the International Labour Organisation standards it has ratified
  

Working Time

• Tackle excessive working hours
  
• Within a decade we will reduce average full-time weekly working hours to 32 across the economy, with no loss of pay, funded by productivity increases
  
• End the opt-out provision for the EU Working Time Directive and enforcing working-time regulations
  
• Set up an independent Working Time Commission to advise on raising minimum holiday entitlements and reducing maximum weekly working time
  
• Invest to increase productivity and making sure workers share the benefits
  
• Keep restrictions on Sunday trading in place and review unpaid overtime

Enforcement

• Introduce a new, unified Workers’ Protection Agency (WPA) to enforce workplace rights, including the Real Living Wage
  
• WPA will be given extensive powers to inspect workplaces and bring prosecutions and civil proceedings on workers’ behalf
  
• Keep employment tribunals free, extend their powers, and introduce new Labour Courts with a stronger role for people with industrial experience on panels
  

Rewriting the Rules

• Take on short-termism and corporate greed, making sure good businesses are rewarded, not undercut
  
• Rewrite the rules of the economy and ensure everyone plays by them
  
• Amend the Companies Act, requiring companies to prioritise long-term growth while strengthening protections for stakeholders, including smaller suppliers and pension funds
  
• Tackle late payments that leave small businesses waiting months to be paid, including banning late payers from public procurement
  
• For small businesses, we will ensure no quarterly reporting for businesses below the VAT threshold
  
• Require one-third of boards to be reserved for elected worker-directors and give them more control over executive pay
• Introduce a broader ‘public interest test’ to prevent hostile takeovers and asset-stripping weakening our industrial base and destroying treasured home-grown companies
• Give workers a voice on public bodies such as the Competition and Markets Authority ff9=Let struggling companies go into protective administration, so they can be sold as a going concern rather than collapsing into insolvency
• Separate audit and accounting activities in major firms and impose more robust rules on auditors
  
• Tackle regulatory capture and streamline regulation by creating a new Business Commission, responsive to parliamentary select committees
  

Social Justice Commission

• Usher in a new era of social justice in Britain
  
• Replace the Social Mobility Commission with a Social Justice Commission, based in the Treasury, with wide-ranging powers to hold us, and future governments, to account
  

Women and Equalities

Women and Equalities

• Create a new Department for Women and Equalities, with a full-time Secretary of State
  
• Ensure all our policies and laws are equality-impact assessed in order to deliver a fairer society for women and all under-represented groups
  
• Establish a modernised National Women’s Commission as an independent advisory body to contribute to a Labour government
  
• Ratify both the Istanbul Convention on preventing domestic abuse and the ILO Convention on Violence and Harassment at work
  
• Create a new ground for discrimination on the basis of socio-economic disadvantage
  

Women

• Take action to close the gender pay gap by 2030
  
• Deliver gender pay equality by making the state responsible for enforcing equal pay legislation for the first time
  
• The new Workers’ Protection Agency working with HMRC will ensure that employers take equal pay seriously and take positive action to close the gender pay gap.
  
• Women will no longer be left to take enforcement action by themselves through the courts
  
• Require all employers with over 250 employees to obtain government certification on gender equality or face further auditing and fines. By the end of 2020, we will lower the threshold to workplaces with 50 employees, whilst providing the necessary additional support for small businesses
  
• Revolutionise parents’ rights by increasing paid maternity leave from nine to 12 months, doubling paternity leave to four weeks and extending pregnancy protection.
• We will ban the dismissal of pregnant women without prior approval of the inspectorate
• Transform the workplace and require all large employers to have flexible working, including a menopause policy, and consider changes to sickness and absence practices
• Enable positive action for recruitment to roles where employers can justify the need for more diversity and introduce a right for all workers to request flexibility over their hours from the first day of employment
  
• Ensure that the single-sex-based exemptions contained in the Equality Act 2010 are understood and fully enforced in service provision
  
• Create a safer society for women and prioritise domestic abuse as a health issue, introduce 10 days of paid leave for survivors of domestic abuse, and ensure women’s refuges receive the long-term sustainable funding they need. Misogyny and violence against women and girls will become hate crimes
  
• Increase women’s representation across parliament by building on the Equality Act and enact Section 106 so that all political parties publish diversity data about electoral candidates
  

Race Equality

• Ensure a pathway to economic inclusion for all, putting an end to all forms of racism and discrimination in our economy and society
  
• Seek to end the politics of hate and commission an independent review into the threat of far-right extremism and how to tackle it
  
• Put wealth and power in the hands of the many, extend pay-gap reporting to BAME groups and tackle pay discrimination on the basis of race
  
• Commit our National Investment Bank to addressing discrimination in access to finance, which many BAME business owners face; and take action to ensure that BAME and women business owners have access to government contracts and spending
  
• Implement recommendations of the Lammy Review to address the disparity of treatment and outcomes for BAME people within the criminal justice system.
  
• Create an Emancipation Educational Trust to educate around migration and colonialism, and to address the legacy of slavery and teach how it interrupted a rich and powerful black history which is also British history
• Strengthen protection for religious communities
  
• Amend the law to include attacks on places of worship (including synagogues, temples, mosques and churches) as a specific aggravated offence
  
• Review current levels of funding for and access to the Places of Worship Protective Security Funding Scheme
  
• Maintain funding in real terms for the Community Security Trust, and consult on giving it statutory protection to ensure that religious communities have the support they need
  

Disability with Dignity

• Champion the social model of disability throughout government.
  
• Through our new Department for Women and Equalities, we will ensure that disabled people can be independent and equal in society, with choice and control over their own lives
  
• Transform the workplace for disabled people by requiring that all employers be trained to better support them, while introducing mandatory disability pay-gap reporting for companies with over 250 employees
  
• End disability discrimination and update the Equality Act to introduce new specific duties including disability leave, paid and recorded separately from sick leave
  
• Recommend that the Equality and Human Rights Commission prepare a specific code of practice on reasonable adjustments to supplement existing codes. The code will also set timescales for implementation of reasonable adjustments to end the long and distressing delays experienced by disabled workers
  
• Reinstate the Access to Elected Office Fund to enable disabled people to run for elected office
• Adopt a British Sign Language Act, giving BSL full legal recognition in law
• Work with employers, trade unions and public services to improve awareness of neurodiversity in the workplace and in society

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