NEWS RELEASE THURSDAY 30 OCTOBER 2003
STUC GENERAL SECRETARY SAYS "EMPLOYMENT LAW TO PROTECT WORKERS MUST BE ENFORCED, NOT JUST PASSED"
Speaking to a major Conference on Employment Law, organised by Croner Consultants in Aberdeen, at Aberdeen Exhibition Centre, where he will be debating with prominent Tory MP, Michael Portillo, STUC General Secretary, Bill Speirs, said:
"Law and its implementation matters. It embodies the people's will, through the enforcement of what the people's representatives decide, whether in the Scottish, British or European Parliaments.
"Employment law is especially important. It affects workers as workers in a whole number of ways, not least their health and safety. But it also has an impact beyond the workplace a worker's family, its daily existence and the future of all its members is shaped by what happens where she or he earns a living.
"That's why we need, not just tougher laws to protect our people in their role as workers we need tougher enforcement: not least here in Aberdeen, where the women and men who produce the "Press and Journal" are currently denied by their employer the right to have their wages and conditions of employment negotiated by a union of their choice."
ENDS