After Farage’s appeal to union members, unions warn that Reform are no friends of working people

A number of trade unions and the TUC have rebuffed Nigel Farage’s call for unions to affiliate to Reform UK, saying the party is “cosplaying” as workers’ champions and has opposed new employment rights.

Via the Times called on unions to attend Reform’s conference and to affiliate to the party, and he suggested one union may be on the brink of doing so.

A recent poll by JL Partners found Labour and Reform were tied with 28% of the union vote each. It found that members of Unite and GMB were more likely to support Reform.

In the Times, Farage said union leaders were “spending their members’ money on policies that their members do not support”. He added: “Reform now runs councils that employ tens of thousands of unionised workers: bin men and women, social workers, care staff, school support workers … Unlike the snobbish Tories of old, we will never treat organised labour with contempt. If you represent working people in this country, my door is open. The doors of every Reform council leader from Sunderland to Sandwell are open.”

However, the general secretary of the TUC and the leaders of five other trade unions including Unison, GMB and Unite all hit back at Farage’s invitation, saying Reform was the party of “corporate interests” and criticising its opposition to new rights for workers embodied in the Employment Rights Act, which Reform has pledged to scrap.

Unison’s general secretary, Andrea Egan said:

It’s a con to think Nigel Farage and his rich cronies are interested in unions for anything but cold, hard cash. They don’t believe in basic rights or fair pay and consistently voted against every measure to improve them.

TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak said:

Let’s be crystal clear: Reform are no friends of working people. If they were, they wouldn’t be planning to rip up workers’ rights like day one sick pay and protection from fire and rehire and zero-hours contracts. And they wouldn’t have a leader who backs privatising the NHS.

Reform can cosplay as champions of workers all they like. But the reality is they’re bankrolled by corporate interests and crypto billionaires who want the rules rigged even further in favour of the rich and powerful, not working people.

And let’s not forget many of their leading voices have shown contempt for trade unions – the very organisations that won the rights and protections they want to strip away. Reform will say whatever they think it takes to win votes. But their record – and their agenda – tells the real story.

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said:

If I had a pound for every politician who said they are the party of workers I’d be a rich woman. Reform have shown absolutely no evidence that they are friends of workers. Not signing up to the Employment Rights Act, inferring privatisation of the NHS and threatening local authority pensions seems the exact opposite.

What needs to happen now is for is the Labour party to stop dithering and be the voice of workers. A little less conversation – a little more action.

The GMB general secretary, Gary Smith, called Reform “rebadged Tories” and said it would not help working people. “Mr Farage and his Reform MPs say one thing to workers and do another,” Smith told the Guardian.

They voted against sick pay and other essential safeguards. They even want to prevent people organising to make work better at places like Amazon. We see them for what they are – rebadged Tories after union members’ basic rights.

Community, the union which represents significant numbers of steelworkers, whom Farage has pledged to support, called his intervention “farcical”. The union’s assistant general secretary, Alasdair McDiarmid, said:

Nigel Farage’s appeal to the trade unions is farcical given the Reform Party has consistently voted against the interests of working class people while under his leadership.

This includes the party’s rejection of the Employment Rights Bill, a landmark piece of legislation, introduced by the Labour Government, that greatly enhances the rights of workers.

Other unions also rejected Farage’s advance.

Fire Brigades Union general secretary Steve Wright described Farage as a “Thatcherite” and an “enemy of trade unions”. He said:

As a former Tory party member in the 1980s, Farage was a cheerleader for Thatcher’s war on the miners and the biggest onslaught on trade unions since the Second World War.

As an MP, Farage opposed the introduction of the Employment Rights Act to ban zero hour contracts and outlaw fire and rehire.

Farage’s deputy Richard Tice has repeatedly stated that Reform wants to raid the pensions that firefighters and other public sector workers have paid into.

Firefighters and other workers will see this ludicrous stunt for what is by a party led by multi-millionaires that is a threat to the working class.

General secretary of the TSSA Maryam Eslamdoust said that union members “will not be conned by this ridiculous and desperate gimmick” from Nigel Farage. She said:

The interests of working people are not safe in the hands of Reform UK, a party whose leaders want to protect their own interests at the expense of everyone else. A Farage-led government would rip up the Employment Rights Act and launch even worse attacks on workers’ rights than Thatcher.