Following the defeats of the government on its Sunday trading law plans and enormous overthrow in the House of Lords on the trade union bills, all union members should now come together and campaign to stay in the European Union. All these victories for trade union values will have come to naught if we lose the referendum and Britain comes out of the EU.

EU legislation has significant influence in the UK employment law. EU treaty provisions and regulations which give clear, precise and unconditional rights to individuals can be enforced in English courts because they have direct applicability. One important example is Article 157 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which provides that ‘Each member state shall ensure that the principle of equal pay for male and female workers for equal work or work for equal value applies’ which was implemented into the UK by way of Equal Pay Act 1970.

Trade unions are deeply concerned at the current government’s trade union bills because it threatens the basic right to strike and puts restrictions on peaceful picketing and protest. At the same time government plans will make the UK an outlier in Europe by allowing agency workers to replace striking workers, as across the EU large agencies have agreed not to use agency workers to replace striking workers. There are also health and safety concerns and risks of a poorer quality of service by inexperienced agency workers.

EU law has important influence on the all area of discrimination in the workplace. The employer must have respect for workers, process fairly and follow the eight data protection principles. The Data Protection Act 1998 and the Employment Relations Act 1999 (Blacklists) Regulations 2010 (SI 2010/493) protect the employee and trade union members from any discrimination. In Europe, Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights gives individuals the right to respect for their private and family life, their home and correspondence. In the UK, this right is enshrined in the Human Rights Act 1998.

Directives such as the Equal Treatment Directive, Race Discrimination Directive, the Framework Directive for Equal Treatment in Employment and Occupation and many more are addressed at the EU member states and implemented by them. The Equality Act 2010 consolidated those directives in the UK. The Working Time Directive was implemented in the UK through the Working Time Regulations 1998 and protects an employee against adverse effects on their health and safety caused by excessively long working hours, inadequate rest or disruptive working patterns.

Directives allow each member state to set their own policy for working and trading on Sunday, but the latest trade union campaign to keep Sunday special, namely Usdaw’s relentless hard work, saw the government defeated and saved employees’ working hours and rights. For these reasons and more, we the trade unionists must come forward with our comrades to stay in the EU.

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Syed Enam Ahammad is a councillor in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, a member of Usdaw’s political divisional committee, eastern division, and a member of Progress. He tweets @syedahammad

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Photo: staticgirl