Letters - December 20, 2019

Tories to tackle labour market violations?
Prime Minister Boris Johnson alongside the newly elected Conservative MPsPrime Minister Boris Johnson alongside the newly elected Conservative MPs
Prime Minister Boris Johnson alongside the newly elected Conservative MPs

With all these new Tory MPs, who apparently are now standing up for us working people, the Resolution Foundation have found one in 20 workers here in Britain do not receive any paid holidays, and workers over 65 do not even receive the 28 days a year that is a legal entitlement in many cases.

Many don’t even receive the minimum wage. Those working in the hospitality industry tend to miss out on entitlements more than any other group. One in 10 workers do not receive their pay slips, and workers on zero hours contracts employed in firms employing less than 25 people are least likely to receive them.

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The UK has a multitude of rules to govern its labour market, from maximum hours to minimum pay, but the rules can only be a reality if they are properly enforced.

Labour market violations remain far too common, with millions of workers missing out on basic entitlements to a pay slip, holiday entitlements and a minimum wage.

Will the new government prioritise investigations into sectors like hotels, and restaurants where violations are so common?

Royston Jones

Anchorsholme

Election

Thank you for Conservative win

Helping the relentless resistance to the democratic process were centre-left institutions, supposedly sane, undoubtedly well educated claiming to be well informed: people in the law, the civil service, the universities (especially), the Bank of England, the House of Lords, the CBI, plus the usual suspects of the left-wing press.

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However, voters took their overdue revenge by finally clarifying their original instructions to leave the EU. I say thank you to them for enabling a Conservative majority of 80.

Alan Chapman

address supplied

Politics

Oven-ready turkeys?

Boris Johnson has achieved a massive Parliamentary majority.

I make no excuses for the catastrophic defeat of Labour and the huge loss of former supporters. What I would advise though is that they and other electors purchase a large diary in the New Year.

Following the Queen’s Speech and the laid-out programme of Government, note every promise made.

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There will be no get-out clause this time of blaming a former administration for any failures. Based on their financial pledges, the Treasury is awash with cash, safe in the hands of a prudent Chancellor. I just hope their oven-ready policies are not oven-ready turkeys, and I don’t mean the farmyard ones.

Denis Lee

Ashton

Politics

Meet needs of working class

The resounding defeat of the Labour Party should be seen as a positive.

A clean sweep of the leadership and woeful shadow cabinet must be swift and merciless to ensure the party resorts to the founding premise of meeting the interests and needs of the urban working class.

Career politicians have no business representing a class they have no knowledge of.

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I can only hope that a new breed of Labour talent will come forward with a better understanding of the wage earners that are the backbone of this nation. A clearer vision of social justice and the strengthening of workers rights.

Not hand-outs but the establishment of pride in the knowledge that taking responsibility for your life and working to achieve your goals truly makes you the equal of any human being.

Jim Kirk

Address supplied

Election

Paying price for ignoring voters

All this blaming this that and the other regarding the destructive loss by the Labour Party. The answer for the devastating result is not Jeremy Corbyn or his policies – it was Brexit.

Whatever excuses they come up with, ex-Labour MP John Mann hits the nail squarely on the head when he says “the Labour Party was created to empower the working class. The workers were empowered with a referendum.

“The Labour Party ignored them. They used their power. That’s it”.

Terry Palmer

Address supplied