RISING food, energy and housing costs and the falling value of wages mean that workers’ living standards are under attack. So are their legal rights. The government refuses to introduce an Employment Bill, promised in 2019, and is currently on course to remove a large body of workers’ rights derived from EU law, including the right to paid holidays. 

The government is also attacking trade union rights, with further restrictions designed to undermine the ability of workers to fight back. Yet British workers are already among the least protected in the developed world, and British employers are among the most powerful. 

British workplaces have been plagued for years by zero-hours or work-on-demand contracts, flexible contractual terms giving wide-ranging powers to managers to dictate when, where and how work is to be done, fire-and-rehire allowing employers to reduce pay and working conditions, and, at P&O Ferries, the emergence of fire-and-replace as a corporate tactic.