Thread by @joswinson

The Prime Minister made much today of her plans to make 'legal commitments' to protect workers' rights after Brexit. Let me tell you what the Conservatives wanted to do when I was Minister for Employment Relations in the coalition government. (1/n)

First, there was the Beecroft 'Report' - though it was really more like a crap GCSE essay attempt without proper evidence. It was written by a Tory donor, though, so they demanded the ideas in it were looked at.

Beecroft included ideas like scrapping maternity rights and bosses being able to fire people for no good reason, on a whim. Vince Cable rightly told the Tories to take a running jump.

Then there was the ridiculous 'shares for rights' scheme, dreamt up by George Osborne, where people could give up employment rights in return for shares. We managed to put protections in place so no one would be forced to do so. But it really was a bonkers idea.

The Tories were adamant about their new employment tribunal fees. I tried to get them stopped, but Grayling refused to budge or even review the evidence of the dreadful impact. Eventually - thankfully - the Supreme Court struck these fees down as unlawful.
theguardian.com/money/2015/feb…

We stopped the Tories scrapping the Equality & Human Rights Commission and the Public Sector Equality Duty, but they succeeded in stalling measures on third-party harassment protections and  removing the ability for workers to get useful information.

We won battles to introduce naming & shaming for firms that break minimum wage law, and massively increased the resources for HMRC to clamp down on rogue employers paying less than the National Minimum Wage.

We stopped the Tories' extreme attempts to undermine the trade union movement. After the Tory majority, they passed the Trade Union Act 2016 - a nasty law, based on scant evidence (industrial relations & positive trade union engagement actually having been a recent success story)

You can argue about whether as Lib Dems we picked, won or lost the right battles on workers' rights in the coalition. But what is not debatable is that these battles were constant.

These battles were the product of many in the Tory party seeing employment rights as unnecessary 'red tape', something to be pared back constantly, sacrificed on the altar of deregulation. (It makes no actual sense - good business thrives when it treats staff well).

When Theresa May tries to appropriate Lib Dem achievements like shared parental leave, more flexible working or gender pay gap reporting, I find it irritating, given we had to fight tooth and nail against her Tory colleagues at every turn to deliver these, as she well knows.

But I am truly furious when she tries to suggest that it is in any way possible to protect employment rights from the axe of a future Conservative Prime Minister, who could tear up any 'legal commitment' she makes now.

No one should be fooled by Theresa May's warm words on workers' rights. I hope Labour MPs see right through her disingenuous, meaningless 'commitment'. Employment rights are not safe under the Conservatives. There is no such thing as a Brexit that protects jobs and workers. /end

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