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Sir Keir Starmer will promise to end “cheap and vindictive attacks” on the trade union movement as he promises to work with both businesses and unions to “rewire” the British economy.
Starmer on Tuesday will become the first UK prime minister to address the Trades Union Congress in 15 years after winning the general election in July with a landslide victory.
The Labour leader will herald the repeal of anti-strike legislation as a shift away from the previous Conservative government’s attacks on trade unions that will “turn the page on politics as noisy performance”.
But Starmer will also try to close down the idea that Labour’s financial reliance on the trade unions makes the party unable to understand the business world.
Instead he will argue that the idea that unions and businesses are always at odds is an “outdated trope” and that he believes in pro-worker, pro-business partnerships.
“Partnership is a more difficult way of doing politics. I know there’s clarity in the old ways, the zero-sum ways: business versus worker, management versus union, public versus private. That kind of politics is not what the British people want,” the prime minister will say.
“I make no apologies to those, still stuck in the 1980s, who believe that unions and business can only stand at odds, leaving working people stuck in the middle,” he will add.
Some business leaders have expressed concerns about the government’s package of “Make Work Pay” employment reforms, which will enhance workers rights and make it easier for unions to go on strike.
The reforms includes policies such as ending zero-hours contracts and “fire and rehire”, extending sick pay and giving workers protection against unfair dismissal from day one — although probation periods will still be allowed.
The package also reverses Tory anti-strike legislation from the past decade to make it easier for unions to take industrial action.
Starmer will also on Tuesday continue his efforts to manage expectations downwards ahead of October’s Budget, in which chancellor Rachel Reeves is expected to outline various tax rises and targeted spending cuts.
The prime minister will claim that the previous Conservative administration “salted the earth of Britain’s future to serve themselves”.
Paul Nowak, the TUC’s general secretary, struck a similar note in a speech on Monday, calling on unions to “roll up their sleeves” to help the new government rebuild industry and public services without expecting it to right the economy overnight.
But tensions between Labour and some of the larger unions were on display on Monday afternoon as a sweeping majority of delegates backed a motion calling Labour’s economic approach into question.
The motion, brought by the RMT and Unite unions, urged the government to loosen its fiscal rules and borrow more to fund public investment.
Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the NEU teachers’ union, said that despite the euphoria of Labour returning to government, the mood of the TUC’s gathering “felt a little flat”.
He said the government was not going far enough to tackle a “crisis” in funding for public services, in child poverty and in the state of the public sector workforce.
Fran Heathcote, general secretary of the PCS public service union, said Labour’s first Budget would be a “defining moment” showing whether the party was committed to rebuilding the economy or willing to unleash a new wave of austerity.
“We have to make the Labour leadership understand the risks they face,” she said, warning that “unless things truly change, the far right is waiting and mobilising”.
Delegates also narrowly backed a motion from Unite and the GMB union criticising the government’s approach to North Sea oil.
The motion said the government should not end new drilling licenses in the North Sea until it had produced a “fully funded workers’ plan guaranteeing commensurate jobs” for workers in the basin. Unite’s representative said “do not ask us to give up our jobs for jobs in wind that aren’t there”.
The motion passed despite resistance from Unison, the NEU and UCU, with the NEU delegate saying “there are no jobs on a dead planet.”
