YH has run a number of stories regarding employment rights. Princess Alexandra Hospital, Asda and the Post Office to name just three.

We contacted Lanour’s prospective parliamentary candidate for Harlow, Laura McAlpine and asked her for her thoughts on employment rights in 2019.

Ms McAlpine said: “I talk to people in Harlow all the time who are concerned about job security and rights at work. Our local ASDA workers will soon have to decide whether to accept the terms of a contract that is being forced on them or be put out of a job. The new enforced contract withdraws paid for breaks and makes Bank Holiday working compulsory. This is evidence that even under EU rules, worker’s rights are just not robust enough.

I agree that delays to Brexit have gone on too long. But we can’t have a Brexit which strips vital protections to worker’s rights and makes it possible, even ‘likely’ under a Tory government, that we have standards below those which will remain protected in the EU once we have left.

I’m passionate about representing the workers, and working families in Harlow and the Villages. I won’t be going to parliament to beg for the rights of ordinary working people. I am an ordinary working person just like those I want to represent, and I’ll be going to demand them.

As your MP, I will support measures to introduce a national living wage of £10 an hour and end exploitative zero-hours contracts. Giving every worker in Harlow, guaranteed working hours for a guaranteed wage. The Labour party was formed to represent working people, and that is what it is seeking to do today. We’ve created a Ministry of Labour which will empower workers and their trade unions. We want to ban zero hours contracts – so that every worker gets a guaranteed number of hours each week, but to do this in a way which also supports small businesses. We intend to abolish employment tribunal fees, so that once again all workers have access to justice.

The Labour Party has a huge number of policies which expand and improve on worker’s rights which only a Labour government would deliver. I support the Labour Party policy to repeal the Trade Union Act and roll out sectoral collective bargaining – because the most effective way to maintain good rights at work is collectively through a trade union. Labour are proposing four new public holidays – bringing our country together to mark our four national patron saints’ days. These will be additional to statutory holiday entitlement, so that workers in Britain get the same holiday breaks as most other countries.

And personally, I have joined the Domestic workers at Princess Alexandra Hospital in their successful fight against privatisation, supported the McDonald’s workers and will join the picket with the post office workers. The Labour Party and GMB who are an affiliated union with Labour, are fighting ASDA on the new contract dispute we mentioned earlier; on this, I stand with the Labour Party, and with those Harlow workers in their fight for fair treatment.