Don’t throw our jobs under a bus

It is time to stop the posturing. Far too many people in public life are discussing Brexit as if it is a parlour game all about political positioning.

It is not. Jobs are at stake and with them the future of communities and industries across the country.

Unite’s position was clear from the outset. For this reason above all – there were others – we campaigned for Britain to remain in the European Union. We lost that argument – including, to be frank, with many of our own members – and we accept the result.

So we must listen and learn, including on the sensitive subject of the free movement of labour, which is enshrined along with the free movement of capital, goods and services at the heart of the EU single market.

Proper safeguards
I have set out Unite’s stall clearly on that – we must introduce proper safeguards for communities and industries affected by EU migration, above all through demanding proper trade union recognition and collective bargaining agreements for any employer seeking to recruit outside the UK.

That will turn the race-to-the-bottom society into a rate-for-the-job culture. Together with other measures, like the restoration of the Migrant Impact Fund, this can start to address the concerns on this issue in communities and in those economic sectors which know that the real-world impact of a EU-wide free market in labour has been a deterioration in wage rates and other conditions.

I therefore welcome Labour’s clear commitment that it is not “wedded to free movement” which, to repeat, only exists in the context of Britain’s existing EU obligations.

However that cannot mean Britain giving up on access to the single market. Tens of thousands of Unite members jobs from manufacturing to financial services depend on open trade with the EU market. To throw that overboard without a thought is to play Russian roulette with our prospects and prosperity.

Not May’s priority?
Yet the Prime Minister’s first comments of the year were to say that access to the single market was not her priority.

It is all very well to say that British firms need to be competitive enough to thrive outside the European single market – and many already do, of course, selling all over the world – but we all know that the short-term price to be paid for becoming “more competitive” or “placing a premium on productivity” is lost jobs for thousands upon thousands of our members as we try to run up that escalator once more.

So it is wrong for anyone in government or in the trade union movement to throw access to the single market overboard in this casual way. There are ways to address public concerns about freedom of movement without throwing jobs and communities under the bus, as I have outlined.

That is why I am urging the Prime Minister to meet with the trade unions urgently, including Unite, to discuss how to balance these competing demands. Our members are angry about pressure on wages, but they also want reassurances that they will continue to have jobs and that our industries can thrive. People may have voted to be out of the EU but they did not vote to be out of work.

These are the tests for Ms May’s government. Can she be trusted to deliver a Brexit for all of the UK, not just for the Tory hard right? Nor can we give an inch to a UKIP-lite message. It is wrong in principle for a movement founded on equality for all to pitch worker against worker. But united, we can put in place a programme that gives working people what they want – prosperity and security.