After 13 years of repeated Tory attacks on workers' rights and the trade union movement, it's clear that change is urgently needed.

With a worsening cost-of-living crisis, more and more workers over the last year have taken strike action to demand fair pay, defend their jobs and to protect their terms and conditions at work.

In response to many of these strikes, the Tories have sought to attack workers and trade unions through the media, have refused to engage in good faith in negotiations and have even passed legislation attacking the right to strike itself.

At the same time, workers in Scotland have been met with a Scottish Government which talks a good game when it comes to fair work principles but has been shown to have a conflicting record on workers' rights.

Only recently, we discovered that some workers employed in the Scottish Courts and Tribunal Service are on zero-hours contracts despite the Scottish Government pledging to end the use of such contracts almost five years ago.

Firefighters, college lecturers, school support staff and local government workers who have taken strike action have found Scottish Ministers either unwilling to engage or quick to pass the blame onto Westminster.

The Scottish Government has also given millions in public grants to multinational companies like Amazon which have questionable records when it comes to workers' rights.

Scottish Labour supports devolution of employment law with a UK-wide minimum standard of workers' rights that cannot be undercut.

It’s clear that the current Tory government is unlikely to devolve employment law to Scotland.

Labour's New Deal for Working People is the most likely and immediate route to transforming workers' rights for workers across Scotland particularly given the commitment to introduce the UK Bill to Parliament within 100 days of the election of a Labour government. We therefore strongly support this legislation.

If Labour wins the next general election, it will implement the New Deal for Working People as a matter of priority. 

Anti-trade union and anti-worker legislation introduced by the Tories will be repealed.

Zero hour contracts and fire and rehire practices will be banned.

Sick pay and parental leave will be strengthened.

And workers will gain unfair dismissal rights from day one of employment. The minimum wage will be increased to become a living wage.

It's no wonder that the New Deal for Working People has enjoyed such strong support from the trade union movement, with the TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak describing it as the "biggest upgrade in worker's rights in a generation".

The choice at the next UK General Election could not be clearer for working people.

Another five years of Tory attacks on workers' rights and trade unions.

Or a Labour Government which will deliver a transformative package of workers' rights to benefit working people across the whole of the UK.