Neither of us wanted the UK to leave the European Union. But what matters now, following the vote, is that we get the best deal for working people.

It’s now clear that before last month’s vote, no one had thought through how the UK should go about leaving. While the Lisbon treaty has a process set out in article 50, it’s in outline only, and there’s little sense of how it would work in practice. And once triggered, it puts the UK on a two-year timeline to leave the EU.

In the 43 years since Britain joined the EU, a complex web of rights and obligations has grown up. Some have been directly incorporated into our law and, in theory, would remain in force after the UK withdraws from the EU, although British people would no longer be able to enforce their rights in the European court of justice. Others, which have not been directly incorporated, would cease to apply to the UK when we leave.

The government now faces the mammoth task of sifting through these rights and obligations, determining their legal status and then making a political choice about whether and in what form to keep them – attempting in just two years to consider more than four decades’ worth of accumulated legislation.

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Many of the rights up for grabs affect millions of people every day. We are particularly concerned about what will happen to entitlements, to annual leave and rest breaks, to parental leave, to rights for agency, part-time and temporary workers and to protections if your job is outsourced or your company sold off.

In the runup to the EU referendum, we argued that leaving would put all these rights at risk. The leaders of the leave campaign – whose duplicity and recklessness have now been laid bare – branded the voicing of these concerns as “scaremongering”. Yet the threat is real.

In the TUC’s poll in the days immediately following the referendum, the vast majority of both remain and leave voters backed safeguarding vital rights like maternity leave (73% of remain and 69% of leave voters) and maintaining protection against discrimination at work (80% of remain voters and 77% of leave voters).

With all this at stake, the UK must not invoke article 50 in a hurry. We hope that the David Davis, the newly appointed secretary of state for exiting the EU, will talk to all political parties, the devolved administrations and – especially where workplace rights, investment, trade and jobs are concerned – trade unions and employers’ organisations. Similar discussions must happen about other rights and obligations, including those on security, the environment, criminal justice and local government.

The government then needs to set out its negotiating red lines and strategy so that they can be debated in parliament, ahead of a vote on invoking article 50.

This is not just a procedural issue: the government must not trade away employment rights and other vital consumer protections behind closed doors. If these rights are to be removed, limited or changed, that must be transparent to the UK public.

The best way forward is for the government to give working people and businesses certainty by legislating to guarantee that all current EU-derived workplace rights will remain in our domestic law irrespective of our relationship with the EU. Of course, a subsequent government could amend these rights, but only by passing primary legislation, not in behind-the-scenes negotiations.

We call on Theresa May’s new government to give a cast-iron guarantee to millions of working people that workplace protections they rely on will not be bartered away in Brexit discussions. Working people did not vote for fewer rights at work, more dangerous workplaces, fewer paid holidays and less time with their kids. This government must respect that.