Labour needs to restore dignity to British working people

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/24/labour-restore-dignity-working-people

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It is said that rights come with responsibilities. I couldn't agree more.

The responsibility upon us now is to the young workers of today and to those entering the workplaces of tomorrow.

Our duty is not to make life harder for them than it already has been made by the most vicious, anti-worker government in memory.

Labour has used this conference to show whose side it is on. From bolstering childcare, strengthening the minimum wage and ditching the hated bedroom tax, Labour is finding its voice.

It can go further by committing to be the party that will restore dignity to working people.

This month, independent research conducted for Unite found that some 5.5 million people could be on zero-hours contracts.

In the seventh richest nation on the planet, one in five workers is treated as throwaway. Our fellow human beings are regarded as disposable.

Here, in Britain today, millions of workers go day to day not knowing if they will have a job tomorrow or what they will earn next week, if they earn at all.

What has happened to our country when a mum must work two or three jobs to put food on the table, yet is told by this government that she is a "burden" on big business, her meagre wages topped up by taxpayer-funded benefits while her employer recycles what ought to be her earnings as shareholder returns and CEO bounty?

Being poor and vulnerable at work deepens misery out of work – rental contracts demanding six months rent up front, mobile phones – vital to track work opportunities – denied on contract.

Insecure working has profound social consequences, none of them good. Our kids will be the first in generations to be worse off than their elders, and have to put their dreams aside – of having their own place, of living a life out of debt, of having a family.

Since the 1970s, as working people became more vulnerable, the share of their earnings kept by their employers as profit grew bigger.

The "bargain" successive governments proposed was that jobs and prosperity would come to Britain, as long as they put up with the worst rights in Europe.

Really? Germany, destroyed by war and tested by reunification, became the powerhouse economy of Europe because it invested in its workers – while their UK counterparts are poorer paid and first on the scrapheap: cheaper and easier to sack.

The time has come for a new settlement for the working people of this country, one built on dignity and fairness.

So it must be to Labour that working people can turn. A cabinet of multimillionaires, advisers from the worlds of loan-sharking and big business and a chancellor so out of touch that he proclaims that the economy has "turned a corner", when for many of us it simply slapped straight into a wall, know all too well whose side they are on.

There should never be a working life today lived in fear. Too often our country has failed working people, allowing business models built on human misery to flourish. From the cleaners on the 4am bus, to the kids told to sweep floors or lose their benefits, we are laying the foundations for misery.

We are not asking for the moon to be made of cheese – only for men and women to be able to hold their own against those with profound power yet too often misuse it.

Rights do have responsibilities. Our responsibility is upon us now. If we honour our values, then those desperate for a decent life Britain will know that Labour is on their side.

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