Vox Political: Tories Want to Leave EU to Scrap Workers’ Rights to Paid Holidays

Mike over at Vox Political on Sunday posted up a piece reporting that Angela Eagle, Labour’s shadow business secretary, had warned on the Andrew Marr show that many Tories wanted Britain to leave the EU, so they could scrap the various workers’ rights that were written into EU law. These include equal pay for men and women, rights for part-time workers, and the right to paid holidays. Mike concurs, stating that she’s ‘absolutely right on this’.

Tories want to quit EU to “scrap workers’ right to paid holiday”

She is. Very much. UKIP’s leadership is drawn very much from the ranks of the Conservative extreme right, and the hate workers’ rights with a passion. It’s a passion they also share with those organs of the embittered chattering classes, the Daily Heil and the Express. The Mail, for example, has ranted on against the maternity and paternity leave, because of the financial burden this places on businesses. It’s argued that it should be scrapped because maternity leave makes it expensive to employ women, who are then likely to get time when they get pregnant. In addition to paying to support them, the company also has to pay another, temporary worker, to do her job.

As well as UKIP, the Tories and Lib Dems a few years ago were also discussing the possibility of removing the right to paid holidays. Mike put up several pieces about this on his blog. This should tell you how reactionary the Tories are, as the legislation giving employees the right to a paid holiday dates back to the late Nineteenth century. As well as harming workers, the scrapping of this right will, needless to say, damage the tourism industry, including Britain’s own. Resorts like Blackpool came to the fore in the 19th century due to the legislation giving workers the right to paid holiday. Blackpool, for example, thrived because it became the holiday centre for industrial workers from the Lancashire textile industry. Before then, resorts such as the various spas, like Bath and Tunbridge Wells, were places where the wealthy and aristocratic came to take the waters. I don’t think the poorer sections of society could afford to visit them, although they certainly did attract their fair share of customers and patrons from all over Europe.

Presumably, this is what the Tories want to return to. An early Nineteenth-century Britain, where the workers just slave away all day long for the factory masters, without sickness or holiday pay, where only the rich are able to take holidays, safe from the danger of mixing with the great unwashed.

Tags: Andrew Marr, Angela Eagle, Bath, Blackpool, Daily Mail, Equal Pay, Labour Party, Lancashire, Maternity Leave, Paid Holiday, Paternity Leave, Spas, Textile Industry, The Express, the Rich, Tunbridge Wells, Upper Classes, Vox Political, Women, Workers' Rights