Give staff company shares, says party
Companies should have to give shares to their staff, to “restore the balance of power in the workplace”, says Britain’s Labour Party.
The move would help redress the situation where “for the first time shareholders now take a greater share of national income than workers,” John McDonnell, the party’s economy spokesman, said this week.
Labour wants to require companies with more than 250 employees to set up “ownership funds”, creating a pool of shares held collectively by the workforce which could pay dividends to staff.
The party says it will reset worker-employer relations “with a significant extension of trade union rights, modernising corporate governance structures and extending the opportunity for employees to share collectively in the benefits of ownership of their company.”
Speaking at the annual meeting of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), McDonnell also said a Labour Government would give workers in the socalled “gig economy” the same employment rights as other staff, including sick pay, paid holidays and parental leave and protections against unfair dismissal. He rejected the idea that this would hit employment.
The proposal for workers to take ownership stakes in their companies fits in with calls for an overhaul of capitalism from the TUC.
“Spivs and speculators” were responsible for the crash in 2008 and they “got away scot free,” Len McCluskey, general secretary of Unite, Britain’s biggest union, told delegates.
The meeting also heard from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who denounced the so-called “gig economy” as “evil” and accused Amazon and other tech companies of “leeching off” Britain.
“They don’t pay a real living wage, so the taxpayer must support their workers with benefits. And having leeched off the taxpayer once they don’t pay for our defence, for security, for stability, for justice, for health, for equality, for education,” said Welby, who was once an executive at Enterprise Oil and Elf Aquitaine.
“Then they complain of an undertrained workforce — from the education they have not paid for.”