Workplace 2020 - make Labour policy

Whilst the Labour leadership election is rightly commanding a lot of attention, the policy of the Party (and of a future Labour Government) will not be determined by the election of a leader.

Indeed one of the issues which Party members need to address is how to democratise the cumbersome and opaque policymaking process the Party adopted in the 1990s. That is as important as arrangements for democratic selection of Parliamentary (and all other) candidates.

Right now however, the Labour Party is asking for ideas about how to improve our workplaces and our working lives through its Workplace 2020 campaign. For those of us in trade unions with relatively complex and slow moving policymaking machinery, the opportunity to engage directly in this exercise is worth taking.

We know that we face a Government determined more than ever before to hack away at workers’ rights – if we can help to shape the policy of the Opposition, and campaign, under the continuing leadership of the current Party Leader, in support of those policies, we will maximise our chances of resisting the attacks which will come upon us before any General Election.

The policy relationship between the trade unions and the Party exists generally at a national level, and the decisions which will be taken at Conference (and at the TUC) are of course important – however, Workplace 2020 is an opportunity for us to engage at a local level, and one which we should take.