Labor’s ruling national executive committee is to discuss plans for massive redundancies among employees, with at least 90 jobs at risk, as Keer Starrer Wants to fix the party’s shattered finances.
The Guardian understands that members of the NEC will receive the findings of a report entitled Organize to Win, which examined how to reorganize the party for future general elections.
Labor Secretary General David Evans hopes to get the planned cuts through the voluntary severance plan – but the 90 redundancies would amount to about a quarter Labour Staff.
A Labor insider said: “This is not an easy decision and we believe it will be a very difficult time for the employees and we will fully engage and consult with them and the trade unions as a whole. He is reshaping his party’s operations in the direction of being fit for the general elections.
Labor’s finances have been hit hard over the past six years by contesting three general elections as well as a string of costly legal cases, and hopes of a membership boom thwarted after Starmer came to power.
The party paid a six-figure sum a year ago to settle a case brought by seven former employees and a veteran BBC journalist, admitting that it discredited them for their handling of antisemitism after a panorama investigation .
Labor’s most recent annual report showed that 367 employees were employed by the party as of 31 December 2019, just after that year’s general election, many of them at its South Side headquarters in Victoria.
There has already been some layoffs among community organizers – grassroots campaigners backed by Corbyn but regarded by skeptics as duplicate work done by existing local activists.
With several major departures yet to recruit a Chief of Staff and Permanent Director of Communications, Starmer is in the process of moving his team.
Also, while discussing redundancy plans in the meeting on Tuesday, NEC will also be asked to approve the proposals To ban four far-left factions from the party.
The groups are accused of undermining anti-Semitic sentiment or harboring expelled members for extreme views.
Labor’s biggest donor, the Unite trade union, attacked the plans on Monday, saying: “While working-class communities continue to bear the brunt of disease and employment concerns, greatly worsened by the pandemic’s conservative mismanagement, Labor Leaving the area instead of fighting against this government to fire on its members. “
The union said the acts of such “political machinery” “create a sense of despair among voters who see a party in perpetual war with itself”.
Starrer’s predecessor Jeremy Corbyn When the Committee on Parallels and Human Rights published its damaging report on the issue, he was suspended from sitting as a Labor MP, after appearing to downplay the scale of the problem of anti-Semitism.
The groups affected by the proposed ban are Racist and Labor Against the Witchhunt which claim that the anti-Semitic allegations were politically motivated; The Labor in Exile network, which explicitly welcomes expelled or suspended members; and Socialist Appeal, a group that describes itself as a Marxist voice of labor and youth.
Starmer has a majority support on the NEC, so plans are expected to be agreed upon. Anyone found to be a member of any of the four groups can automatically be expelled from the Labor Party.
The plan has also been strongly opposed by Momentum, a grassroots campaign group set up to support Corbyn’s leadership.
“We oppose crime by association,” Momentum said in a statement. “The Labor Party has always been home to a wide range of political traditions and we have a responsibility to work with one another to build support for socialist ideas and policies.”