INTERNATIONAL workers’ day, and it seems appropriate to consider the impact of Brexit on employment rights.
The difficulty in writing about this area as soon as you look closely at it, is that no-one really knows how leaving the EU will affect rights in the UK – whether that be workers’ rights, human rights, or the rights of disabled people. While some are written into UK law, and others are set to be preserved under the Great Repeal Bill, concern has focused on possible repeal or the danger existing rights are preserved as in aspic but the UK fails to move with the times as rights advance across the rest of the continent.
This was the pattern again when the Scottish Parliament’s Equalities and Human Rights Committee took evidence on Brexit last week. But the submission from Unison caught my eye. Written by the union’s legal expert Peter Hunter it strikes a more pragmatic tone.
Workers’ rights, he argues predate the EU. Many were achieved through popular social justice movements born in the 1960s and sustained by organised labour and industrial action. Progress over equal pay for gender-segregated jobs, for instance, advanced by a number of means. “Equal rights weren’t invented in Brussels and EU intervention, of itself, was not sufficient to bring equality,” he points out.
The risk of rights being repealed post-Brexit remains “massive”, he says, despite the uncertainty.
But Mr Hunter adds: “The EU has always been long on rights and short on remedy,” adding wryly: “If EU law had actually stopped 60,000 illegal pregnancy dismissals every year, then perhaps more women would have voted ‘remain’.”
There is a solution, the Unison man told the committee. The Scottish Government could – and should – go further than paying lip service to preserving EU rights. Instead it should make human rights binding and properly enforceable. Otherwise, rights agreed with the UN, or those guaranteed by the ECHR remain paper rights, “unknown and inaccessible to ordinary women and men”. It’s as realistic a response to the rights issues raised by Brexit as I have seen anywhere. I’ll be interested to see if the committee take it on board.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here