The New Deal for Workers is a campaign led by trade unions and their members. It calls for a new social settlement for working people of Britain and to develop greater rights and provision for those same workers.

Over a decade ago, the CWU launched a campaign to reshape our entire economy in favour of working people. Since then, workers have been subject to spiralling wealth inequality, a global pandemic which devastated our entire economy and employment practices which shirk workers rights at every turn. It has never been more important to bring back a sense of balance to the workplace and empower trade unions to organise across the country, especially in the private sector.

We are proud to say that after years of campaigning, the Employment Rights Act (ERA) marks an important first step towards rectifying this imbalance in the world of work. The ERA introduces a number of individual and collective rights, including:

• An end to most zero hour contracts
• An end to fire and rehire practices
• The right to protection from unfair dismissal from six months of employment, rather than two years
• The right to sick pay from day one of illness
• The right to parental leave from day one of employment
• Repealing restrictive anti-trade union laws
• Introducing sectoral collective bargaining in the adult social care sector

These reforms will genuinely change the lives of millions of working people.

But we still need to go further. UK workers still have far less collective rights than other European countries and union density in the private sector is less than 12%. We need to introduce sectoral collective bargaining agreements across entire industries to level up our economy. Bogus self-employment and gig-economy employment models must become a thing of the past and decently paid, secure jobs must be prioritised. That is why the CWU will continue to call for further reforms to ensure that working people are empowered everywhere and we can unlock the benefits of increased growth and productivity for the workforce and our communities- not just those at the top.