MaudGonneMad Do you know why you have very strong employment rights, Scremersford? Holiday entitlement? Pensions? Health and safety legislation? Maternity pay? To name but a few?
Other than the Factories legislation which eventually resulted in the criminal provisions of the HSAWAct74, enforced by the HSE (not by individuals in the workplace), all of those stem from the requirement to conform to the anti-discrimination provisions in the then Treaty of Rome 1957, as modernised and updated by the requirement of direct effect, the duty of sincere co-operation, the more recent principle of mutual recognition and so on, and its more recent interplay with fundamental rights. Have a look at TEU and TFEU if you don't believe me.
But it was BECAUSE of the unions fighting for their members that such things became the law for all of us.
No, it wasn't. It was because we joined the then EEC in 1972 and had to bring our laws up to date with European legislation. The holiday entitlement we currently enjoy for example stems from Directive 2003/88/EC, the Working Time Directive. Our right to equal pay, which has been around since 1970, stems from now Articles 18 and 19 TEU and Article 45 TFEU, the anti-discrimination provision, as do our rights not to be discriminated against, not just in the workplace, but in relation to accessing services, via the Framework Directive/Equal Treatment Directive 2000/78. (Now) Article 157 TEU provides for equal pay for male and female workers.
You are not seriously going to claim that the UK wouldn't have employment rights if it weren't for the trade unions, are you? Jesus Christ. There is ignorance, and then there is deliberate ignorance. Do you even know how the three different types of trade union activity are catered for in European law and how they differ between the central European countries, the Scandinavian countries and the UK, which is an outlier? The UK trade union movement isn't actually very effective at all at securing workplace influence, if you compare it to the Scandinavian system of consensus.
The problem is that people like me, ordinary, mere female people like me, who do understand employment law, are dissuaded from union membership because of people like you and other union dinosaurs coming out with rude and ignorant comments such as that which you made above. Thankfully, people like me don't need to rely on an old boy's club of a union to enforce our employment rights, because they are right there in legislation with a structure of enforcement, and thankfully individuals have more choice than wasting time getting a union rep interested in their case if their rights have been infringed.
e.g. Article 3 of that directive, entitled ??Scope??, states in paragraph 1:
??Within the limits of the areas of competence conferred on the [European Union], this Directive shall apply to all persons, as regards both the public and private sectors, including public bodies"
I'm a solicitor who does a lot of employment law work, by the way.