As the election campaign really heats up in the last remaining days before the big vote, we at Thompsons today launch our 2015 General Election manifesto.  

As Scotland’s leading firm of solicitors dedicated to representing trade unions and victims of workplace injury and mistreatment, we have first hand experience of the deficiencies in our current laws.  We see daily the extent to which the laws currently fail to fairly balance the relationship between employer and employee and between victims of accidents and insurers.

Far from seeking to fairly balance those rights, many of the Acts of Parliament introduced by the Con(not so)Dem government over the last five years have swung the balance of power completely in favour of employers, insurers and big business.  Our country has seen some of the most regressive and aggressively anti-worker legislation for generations.  

There is therefore an urgent need for legislative reform.  Over the next six days we will set our case in relation to specific areas of legislative reform.  Some matters would require legislation at Westminster and others could be taken forward as legislation at the Scottish Parliament.  

On behalf of every victim of workplace accident and mistreatment; and on behalf of every trade union member, we demand that the government established on May 8th set their minds immediately to reform the law in relation to each issue we highlight on their own and, where necessary, in conjunction with the Scottish Parliament.

We demand:

• Radical and effective Corporate Homicide legislation that will serve as a real deterrent
• The immediate repeal of Section 69 of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2103
• The devolution of health and safety laws to Scotland
• The end to zero hours contracts and the creation of employment security
• An overhaul of our fatal accident inquiry system to create a system that serves the victims’ families and ensures that lessons are learned
• The immediate scrapping of Employment Tribunal fees and the creation of radical new structure for resolving employment disputes that will ensure access to justice for mistreated workers
• Legislation to attack and end blacklisting in every form that it takes and to ensure that no employer with dirty hands in terms of blacklisting will ever benefit from government contracts.