Unite’s general secretary, Len McCluskey, has said the union must listen to the concerns of working people and push for an end to free movement of labour.
Launching his bid to be re-elected as general secretary of the UK’s largest union, McCluskey said “workers have always done best when the labour supply is controlled and communities are stable”.
He added: “While we must reject any form of racism, and help refugees fleeing war, we must also listen to the concerns of working people.
“That’s why I have called for new safeguards to stop companies cutting costs by slashing workers’ wages and transforming a race-to-the-bottom culture into a rate-for-the-job society.”
The move puts him at odds with the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who has staunchly defended freedom of movement and rejected calls for curbs on immigration.
McCluskey resigned last week, triggering an early election for the role of Unite’s general secretary. On Monday, Gerard Coyne, a regional secretary for the union in the West Midlands, announced he was running for the role.
McCluskey, a former docker who has been general secretary since 2011, launched his campaign on Friday, PoliticsHome reported. He focused on the role of the union in post-Brexit Britain and combating the “gig economy”.
“In all the talk of hard and soft [Brexit], of market access and so on, workers need to know that someone is looking out for them,” McCluskey said.
“We are putting protecting jobs, as at Nissan, and workers’ rights at the top of the agenda – but that work is just starting. We can’t let the City and the CBI settle our economic future without hearing from working people.”
McCluskey described the emergence of the “gig economy” as the “age-old problem of a casual labour market”, adding that it had reached epic proportions in Britain.
“That millions of workers have no security and few rights is a blight on British society,” he said. “The trade union challenge is to offer these workers the same protections as we do to those in better-established industries.
“Unite will be in the forefront of legal and political campaigns to end the abuses of the ‘flexible’ labour market.”
