Jeremy Corbyn will today threaten to set Labour on a collision course with big business, telling a trade union audience in Scotland about his desire to rebalance industrial relations away from employers with greater collective bargaining rights for employees and workers having a say on executive pay.

The Labour leader will address an STUC rally in Glasgow and for the first time will speak alongside First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to oppose David Cameron’s controversial Trade Union Bill.

He will announce that Ian Lavery, the Northumberland MP and a former President of the National Union of Mineworkers, will lead the party’s commission on creating new rights in the workplace; a pledge Mr Corbyn made in his leadership campaign.

In a keynote speech at tonight’s event, which could also include a contribution from Syriza’s Yanis Varoufakis, Greece's ex-finance minister, the party leader will say: “I was elected on a platform of extending democracy in every part of the country and every part of society, giving people a real say in their communities and workplaces, breaking open the closed circle of Westminster and Whitehall; and, yes, of boardrooms too.”

Mr Corbyn, in calling for a “world of work fit for the 21st century”, will pledge that not only would a Labour government repeal the Conservative Government’s trade union legislation if it won in 2020, but it would also “extend people's rights in the workplace and give employees a real voice in the organisations they work for”.

He will say: “That means new trade union freedoms and collective bargaining rights, of course, because it is only through collective representation that workers have the voice and the strength to reverse the race to the bottom in pay and conditions.”

The Labour leader will claim that the Tories are determined to “tip the scales still further in the direction of the employer”.

He will say that “that same rigging of workplace power is what has led directly to the explosion in executive pay and boardroom excess while low wages and insecure employment have mushroomed under Cameron”.

Mr Corbyn will declare: “So what about giving every employee a real democratic say on executive pay?”

In August in an interview with The Herald during his leadership campaign, the London MP broached the idea of a national maximum wage after it emerged that last year the pay of the bosses of Britain’s top companies continued to move away from the rest of society with the average FTSE 100 chief executive earning 183 times more than a typical UK worker; in 2010, it was 160 times higher.

He said at the time there ought to be an audit of pay levels in every organisation in the UK and added: “There ought to be a maximum wage. The levels of inequality in Britain are getting worse.”

Earlier this week, Scottish Government ministers appeared to be flexing their muscles for a constitutional battle with the UK Government over the Bill, which is due to begin its passage through the House of Lords in January.

The administrations in London and Edinburgh are at loggerheads over whether or not Holyrood should have the right to give consent to the Bill’s provisions.

These include a requirement for a 40 per cent turnout threshold for strike ballots in "important public services" and an end to the "check off" system, whereby union subscriptions are taken directly from pay packets.

SNP ministers believe aspects of the proposed law, which has been condemned by opponents as an ideological attack on workers' rights, directly impact on devolved responsibilities, meaning the Scottish Parliament should have the right to block it north of the Border.

But UK ministers point out employment law is reserved to Westminster and have made clear they will press ahead despite the opposition in Scotland.

The Tory Government denies its proposals are an attack on workers’ rights but, rather, argues they strike a modern day balance between employees’ rights and those of working people and businesses.