Labour promises to abolish anti-strike laws “immediately” and give unions more power

Labour will take “immediate” action to abolish anti-strike laws and strengthen the role of trade unions, the new business minister said yesterday.

Jonathan Reynolds said the strike restrictions introduced by the last Conservative government would be immediately “stripped from the statute book”.

Mr Reynolds said the government would also begin work on broader measures to strengthen workers’ rights within Labour’s first 100 days in power.

He told the BBC: “Some of these things are decisions that will take effect immediately as Conservative legislation and that we will remove from the statute book. Other things obviously will not become law until we go through that very significant process of passing a law… but we will start that process immediately.”

Mr Reynolds did not specify which anti-strike laws would be repealed, but Labour has previously said it would repeal measures requiring unions to ensure a “minimum level of performance” during strikes in public services such as rail, education and health.

Rules requiring a minimum 50 percent participation in public sector strikes are also likely to be scrapped.

In a surprise move, responsibility for implementing Labour’s new workers’ rights package was transferred from its champion, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, to Mr Reynolds.

He said the government would push for a ban on the so-called “fire and rehire” strategy that has allowed some companies to curtail the rights of their existing workforce.

However, he hinted that there would be some “exceptions”, saying: “We recognise that there are cases where a company needs to change circumstances because, frankly, if there weren’t those, the business would be lost.”

“We understand that, but this is a process that you go through and it’s about making sure that we don’t see an economy that tries to remain competitive by simply making working conditions worse.”