Revelations in the media that Boris Johnson and Michael Gove have teamed up to begin an assault on workers rights have leaked out.
The Prime Minister promised that employment rights would be protected – but she needs to face down a Brextremist ministerial plot to scrap the Working Time Directive in the UK, or millions of workers could lose their paid holidays, face even longer working weeks, lose rest breaks at work, and breaks between shifts as well as other protections for women and young people.
No-one voted for Brexit to lose out on holidays, or to hand power over to bad bosses.
The Sunday Times and Sun have reported plans by ministers – including Michael Gove and Boris Johnson – to scrap the Working Time Directive after Brexit. That law underpins our rights to reasonable hours, breaks and holidays.
It’s long been a target of the hard right, who want to give bosses even more power over workers.
Losing the protections of the directive means 7 million workers could lose rights to paid holidays (4.7 million of them women, and many on zero-hours or part-time contracts). Even more could be forced by bosses to work more than 48 hours a week. Others could lose guaranteed lunch and rest breaks.
We had holiday rights before the EU, but not to the same levels – the Working Time Directive gave nearly five million women paid holidays for the first time.
This is a straight-up attack on our rights at work. The Prime Minister promised that our working rights would be protected after Brexit. Now is the time for her to keep her word, not give in to hard-Brexit extremists in her own cabinet.
If she won’t stick to her promises now, millions will find work less worker-friendly after Brexit. And it’ll open the floodgates for the hard-brexiteers to cut back even more of our employment rights as they seek to make Britain a “poundland” low regulation tax haven.
