By Andy Ford
The latest TUC circular to union reps describes the Employment Rights Act 2025 – which has now received ‘Royal Assent’ – as “an historic win for working people.” That being the case, a lot of trade union activists will be asking why trade union members in Rochdale, members of USDAW, are having to strike against a company determined to impose worse conditions on them – the classic “fire and re-hire” tactic.
The reason why these USDAW members are having to take strike action can be seen in the same TUC circular. The new act, it says, introduces “ a ban on abusive fire-and-rehire practices”. That little word “abusive” makes all the difference, because it is a get-out clause, a huge loophole that the government introduced into the act under pressure from employers.
So now, all an uncrupulous employer needs to do, is to argue that they have “no economic alternative” and that their measures are not “abusive”.
This strike in Rochdale exposes the failure of the right-wing trade union leaders – who have had, and still have, considerable influence in the Labour Party. They, including the previous general secretary of USDAW itself, could have held the Labour leadership firmly to their pledges on workers’ rights. If the Labour leadership have been able to dilute their original commitments on workers’ rights – and they did – it was only because trade union leaders allowed them to get away with it.
Intermittent strikes
The Rochdale USDAW members work for Tetrosyl, a successful manufacturer of car care products such as T-Cut. They have now been taking intermittent strike action for months over the company’s imposition of new contracts removing tea breaks and stripping out shift allowances. The imposed changes will cost workers an average of £7,000 a year. This is despite Tetrosyl recently paying out £2 million in dividends to shareholders!
The imposed contract changes have been put through using a ‘fire and rehire’ process whereby an employer terminates its workers’ contracts unilaterally and immediately offers new contracts on worse conditions. Fire and rehire is illegal in most other western European countries.
Keir Starmer originally agreed, in a solemn, ‘carved-in-stone’ commitment to the Labour-affiliated unions, that the practice would be outlawed in the promised Employment Rights Act “within a hundred days” of winning the election. [A “hundred day” roadmap stretches to years – Left-Horizons]. But here are the Tertosyl workers, 574 days after the election, still facing fire and rehire. No wonder no-one trusts Starmer.
Business lobbied to dilute rights at work
Fire and rehire is not expected to actually be banned until January 2027, more than two years on from Labour’s landslide. The proposals are still open to consultation as the Labour government bends over backwards to dilute and weaken any benefits to trade unions. So far, business lobbyists have managed to insert various exemptions and loopholes which will give rich pickings to corporate lawyers in the years to come.
“Minor and non-detrimental” changes (however those may be defined) can still be imposed, and, in a more serious loophole, companies will be able to engage in fire and rehire if they can demonstrate to a court after the event that it was “necessary” to secure the business as a “going concern”. Which was exactly the argument put forward by P&O in that infamous case.
The whole sorry saga of the Employment Rights Act is one of repeated broken promises and bad faith by Starmer and his clique. In their words, they claim they are “on the side of working people AND of business” – but this amounts to trying to find a middle way between ruthless employers (and their lobbyists) and workers and their unions, including the unions that affiliate to the Labour Party, and who actually pay the running costs of the Party. But there is no middle way between wrong and right.
Now the USDAW leaders, having supported Starmer throughout his leadership, including during his repeated dilution of the Employment Rights Act, find themselves playing catch-up.
The Labour MP for Worsley, Michael Wheeler, was formerly a senior USDAW official who sat on the Labour Party NEC until the 2024 election, and he apparently supported Starmer in everything, although we can’t know for sure, because there are no published minutes and USDAW members do not know what he says or does in their name.
Both Wheeler and Joanne Thomas, the new general secretary of USDAW, have visited the Tetrosyl picket to express full support for their striking members, and denouncing the use of fire and rehire to cut their pay by thousands of pounds.
Joanne Thomas is the current chair of TULO, the Trade Union Labour Party Liaison committee and so is not without influence in this situation. They must both be hoping that their members at Tetrosyl don’t ask too many questions about the the cosy relationship between the union leadership and the Labour leadership and the much-delayed and ineffectual ban on fire and rehire!
Further information and a video is on the USDAW website and Facebook here
