Starmer Heckled As Trade Unions Oppose Labour’s New Austerity

“No one in this room wants to hear such a gloomy forecast,” said Keir Starmer as he addressed the TUC’s annual congress in Brighton on Tuesday. He stood at a lectern proclaiming “A NEW DEAL FOR WORKING PEOPLE” with a graphic evoking the sun in the sky, but that didn’t stop the prime minister from issuing the trade union movement with the bitter pill of future “tough decisions” over pay to ensure “economic stability.”

The prime minister was heckled by one delegate, who called out, “tax the rich”.

While the prime minister received a short standing ovation from delegates, his message proved unpalatable to some: PCS general secretary Fran Heathcote said that “we’ve had enough of being told about ‘tough decisions,’” while NEU general secretary Daniel Kebede said that “the politics of austerity will only be ended in practice, not in fine words.”

But despite these ripples of anger, and disquiet at Rachel Reeves’s decision to cut to winter fuel allowance, it’s clear that unions welcome Labour’s election victory. When union leaders met last year, they were facing down the existential threat of minimum service levels legislation. This year saw the first prime minister address congress since Gordon Brown spoke in 2009.

With 15 years of open loathing from various Conservative governments determined to destroy the trade union movement now over, unions are now working out what Labour’s approach to industrial relations will be. The TUC is preaching patience, with general secretary Paul Nowak telling congress that “no government can put right 14 years of Tory chaos overnight.”

The seaside gathering is an opportunity for trade unions to pin down the government on the details of reforms before the legislation is unveiled, and to push it on some of the areas where it has so far refused to budge.

The deadline for Labour’s promise to introduce an employment rights bill ­within the first 100 days of government ­– 12 October – is rapidly approaching. Originally known as Labour’s new deal for working people, the package was first introduced in 2021, and contains a raft of reforms to employment law, including ending fire and rehire, banning “exploitative” zero hour contracts, and strengthening trade union rights.

Unions are confident that the legislation will be implemented. But given the size and complexity of the bill, they remain concerned over how comprehensive it will be. Already suspicious at Starmer’s repositioning of Labour as “pro-business,” trade unions know full well that a skeleton bill would be exposed to efforts from corporate lobbying to water it down.

Speaking at a fringe event on Monday evening, employment minister Justin Madders said the new workers’ rights package would “contain the sort of thing that would make you say to the person on the street: ‘it does matter who you vote for’.”

Madders promised that the union movement’s trust in Labour “was going to be repaid” in the bill. However, if unions suspect that the bill makes too many concessions to employers’ organisations and business, it’ll likely spark a row that could dominate the Labour party conference later this month.

Pressure on Labour from the media to pick a fight with the unions has begun in earnest, and will likely ratchet up at any sign of anger from the labour movement about the employment bill. Labour’s ties with trade unions have triggered a media onslaught – with hysterical claims about union “paymasters” – despite donations from business and private individuals to Labour vastly outstripping those from unions.

But look beyond the frenzied claims about union “barons” coming to “ruin your life,” and it is clear that the proposals up for discussion at congress both reflect the public mood and advance new ideas into the public domain: abolishing the two-child limit, renationalising the postal service, sectoral collective bargaining across the economy, tackling privatisation, pay restoration in the public sector, and opposing cuts to the winter fuel allowance.

More broadly, the policies put forward an economic alternative to the one set out by Rachel Reeves. With the chancellor determined to repeat austerity, unions are pushing back against Labour’s talk of “tough decisions.”

Speaking to the Mirror, Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said “we’ve got a situation where pensioners are being pickpocketed. At the same time, you have the richest 50 families in Britain worth £500 billion.” A motion calling for a wealth tax on the richest 1%, closing private equity and inheritance tax loopholes, and reforming the “unnecessarily restrictive and arbitrary fiscal rules” passed unanimously.

Despite the appearance of a united front at congress – most debate over motions happens long before they reach the conference floor – each union has different industrial concerns and approaches. As the hard slog of turning last year’s promises into this year’s policies continues, these divisions will come out into the light.

For instance, the CWU, whose members’ pay and conditions are being undermined by the non-unionised gig economy parcel sector are concerned about pinning Labour down on redefining employment status to create a “single status” for workers. But that could threaten members of the GMB, which has done deals with gig economy employers like Deliveroo and Uber.

“As was so painfully exposed by the last government, when you lose control of the economy it’s working people who pay the price,” Starmer told delegates in his Tuesday address. But across the Brighton conference, workers are already paying the price for an economy that doesn’t work for them. Until that changes, they’re likely to remain hostile to Labour’s economic timidity.