Theresa May’s Brexit deal has failed to deliver any essential protections for working people, the TUC has warned.

“For the past two years trade unions have been clear that any Brexit deal would have to safeguard rights at work, otherwise we couldn’t support it,” noted TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady. “Theresa May brushed off our concerns, insisting that her deal would ‘protect and enhance’ rights at work. Well as of last week, we know for sure that it doesn’t.”

In the prime minister’s hard sell, a 25 November statement listing ‘40 reasons to back the Brexit deal’, there’s not a single mention of workers, employment rights or workplace health and safety protections. “We’re talking about everyday protections that really matter to working people. Like paid holidays, rights for part-time workers, time off for working mums and dads, equal pay for women and limits on working hours,” wrote O’Grady in a Huffington Post column. “These rights were won by trade unionists through the EU, and we’ve been clear that leaving the EU must not put them at risk. And building on that, working people need a long-term, binding guarantee that rights in the UK will keep pace with those across Europe.”

She warned that a future government of Tory Brexiteers could under May’s template “try to negotiate a free trade agreement that undermines our hard-won workplace protections. We know that there’s appetite in the Conservative Party for a bonfire of workers’ rights.” O’Grady, calling for either a general election or a popular vote on May’s deal, concluded: “The government knows this deal is bad for jobs, as its own impact assessments show. But we now know it would also be a disaster for rights at work…. It’s working families’ futures that are at stake. And the government is failing them.”