Protecting Employee Rights and Access to Justice

As an amendment to motion S4M-13442 in the name of Roseanna Cunningham (Protecting Employee Rights and Access to Justice), leave out from "calls for" to end and insert "welcomes the wide-ranging debate that is taking place about the pros and cons of the devolution of employment rights and the potential impact on working people; understands that there are a number of views held by individual trades unions, the STUC, TUC and others on the issue; further notes that the UK Government has indicated its intention to further restrict the ability of trades unions and individual employees across the UK to access redress to legitimate industrial grievance with a continuation of attacks on fundamental employment rights, including the right to strike; considers that higher turnouts in industrial ballots are as desirable as higher turnouts in any other democratic election but rejects entirely the UK Government's suggested approach, which makes no attempt to support overdue reforms such as the introduction of online balloting, which might achieve this aim, and rejects the thresholds proposed for ballots; notes that good industrial relations should be considered essential to a more productive economy and to more satisfying work in which employees are properly rewarded for their labour through the extension of collective bargaining, for example in sectors such as independent social care or contract cleaning, and stronger action on the living wage with the creation of a unit in the Scottish Government to actively promote the payment of the living wage, including via public procurement; further notes calls for the devolution of other workplace protections, including the power to abolish the employment tribunal fees regime, and calls on the Scottish Government to deliver genuine improved access to justice by committing to a Scottish inquiry into the blacklisting of construction workers and the awarding of public contracts to contractors that are alleged to have been complicit in such practices, a review of the convictions of miners arrested during the 1984-85 strike, the creation of a Scottish hazards centre, an improved fatal accident inquiry process, a review of culpable homicide legislation and action to use fully the powers of the Scottish Government to address bogus self-employment and its abuses by agencies."