Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-07-06
Topic: Labor
John Eugene Joseph Dromey (Labour, Centre-left): It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Downton Abbey. I want to speak on employment in relation to section H1 in part 2 of schedule 5 to the Scotland Act 1998 and new clause 63. I rose from the Grunwick picket line ultimately to be elected as the deputy general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union. I have believed all my life in the old trade union legends of "unity is strength" and "solidarity for ever." I have seen the consequences of disunity, including in Scotland. I remember the activities of ruthless gangmasters in the fields and fish farms of Scotland, which our agricultural section was battling against. I remember the shameful pressures that were brought to bear by supermarkets on the slaughterhouses and packing plants of the meat industry. They drove down costs along the supply chain and led to a two-tier workforce. Newly arrived migrant workers—overwhelmingly, they were agency workers—were on poorer conditions of employment. Scottish workers here for generations were directly employed full-time on better conditions of employment. That divided workforces and damaged social cohesion—there was exploitation and undercutting. Not once did we blame the workers concerned; we sought to unite them, and it was tough. I remember one plant in Scotland where there was a fight involving 100 workers in a car park, such were the strong divisions in the workforce over that two-tier labour market. We united that workforce around a recognition that it was not newly arrived migrants who were the problem, but ruthless employers seeking to undermine and undercut Unity was what we achieved, not only among workers in Scotland, but between workers in Scotland and England and across the four nations of the United Kingdom. As a consequence, we won landmark achievements for workers. The Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004 was the most complex private Member’s Bill taken through Parliament in 30 years, and it established the Gangmasters Licensing Authority. Jim Sheridan, a former Transport and General Workers Union convener at Barr and Stroud in Glasgow, sponsored that Bill. We also achieved equal treatment for agency workers and the directly employed. Finally, following a landmark inquiry by the Equality and Human Rights Commission into what had happened in parts of the north of England and Scotland, the supermarkets were compelled to end the two-tier labour market in the meat industry supply chain. Those battles, which changed life for the better and the laws protecting workers for the better, would never have been won without a unity of workers north and south of the border, and a Labour Government Even under a Conservative Government, great battles were fought and won for Scotland and for Scottish workers—battles that could not have been won without that unity of Scottish and English workers. I will give two examples. First, I was privileged to lead the great battle against the closure of Rosyth dockyard. The yard was privatised in 1987. In 1991, a Conservative Government, encouraged by Conservative Members of Parliament in the south-west, moved down the path of closing Scotland’s biggest industrial establishment, Rosyth dockyard. Some 20,000 jobs hung on that decision. The Conservatives down south were saying, "Close Rosyth. Bring the work down to Devonport and we will see all the Navy’s work done on the south coast of England."