Anti-union laws

Anti-strike law: what “defiance” means

From the Free Our Unions blog Fire Brigades Union leader Matt Wrack has called for a “mass movement of non-compliance” against the Minimum Service Legislation. That’s good. But as I understand the legislation, “non-compliance” begs the question. A union can refuse to enter into consultation about “minimum service” levels. Then, under the law, the levels are set by the government. A union can refuse to talk with the employer about which people will required to work on strike days to provide those levels. Then, under the law, the employer can name people unilaterally. If the union refuses to...

After 15 March: build links locally

The mass strike on 15 March is, in its form, the nearest equivalent to “general strike”-type activity we are likely to see in Britain, this side of mass defiance of anti-strike laws. Those laws prevent a body like the TUC from simply “calling a general strike”. They also prevent workers not covered by an official ballot mandate from legally joining a strike called by any individual union. Large social progress in Britain, let alone socialist revolution, will, of course, require mass defiance of those laws. But while the labour movement does not yet have the confidence and organisation for such...

Solidarity to beat Tories!

“Move fast and break things” (Mark Zuckerberg) and “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste” (Rahm Emmanuel) are today’s rules of combat for the ruling class. From their own angle, they’re right. In the class struggle, the side that is quickest on its feet, most agile, most energetic in mobilising and inspiring its supporters, is more likely to win. The Tories are set to lose the next election, and to have difficulty with their MPs even getting through pragmatic adjustments to their Northern Ireland Protocol. They are still setting a fast and determined pace. They want to get through as...

The Tories will be "weak" only if we get stronger

Keir Starmer's claim at the 25 January Prime Minister's Questions that Rishi Sunak is "hopelessly weak" reflected a favourite Labour leadership theme. The problem with the Tories is supposedly that they are weak, incompetent, and so on. Their policies serve the interests of the rich at the expense of the majority? That is played down, secondary, considered a less vote-catching comment. So a strong Tory government, competently implementing its noxious agenda, would be better? Starmer claimed that Sunak was "too weak" to deal with Nadhim Zahawi's tax evasion. Such a nonsensical idea fits well...

For a national union protest against anti-strike laws

Free Our Unions supporters will take part in picket lines, strike rallies, and other actions and protests on 1 February, as part of the mass strike and TUC day of action against threatened new anti-strike laws. They’ll be promoting the campaign’s next open organising meeting, on Tuesday 7 February at 7pm, which will discuss the next steps. A particular focus will be coordinating activity within our unions to push for a national trade union demonstration against the laws. Meetings where plans for practical activity can be democratically discussed and developed are a vital part of any campaign...

A how to which doesn't tell us how

Charlie Kimber’s article in Socialist Worker 2837, “How to Challenge Sunak’s anti-union laws”, in fact fails to tell you how. After a long list of the failings of the union and Labour leaderships, the concluding words for the reader are: “[t]he new laws are another reason to widen, escalate and unite strikes.” But we’d want that anyway. What specific campaigning on the laws do you propose, Charlie? Kimber says rightly that union leaders should refuse to discuss detail of the new laws with the government (not that the government wants discussion...) Like the SWP, we want to make the passage of...

Campaign now to defeat minimum service law

Perhaps a couple of thousand people protested against the Tories' minimum service law proposal in London on 16 January. That was a good step up - but only one small step The Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill had its first reading in the House of Commons on 10 January. The Tories want it through as quickly as possible: they rejigged the parliamentary agenda on 16 January, for example, to give time to it. On coming into force, it will apply to strikes even where the strike ballot or notice of the strike preceded the finalisation of the relevant minimum service levels. It is unlikely to get...

Anti-union laws: scrap them all!

Adapted from Free Our Unions Free Our Unions has an organising meeting via Zoom at 7pm on 17 January to discuss action against the Tories’s revised plans for anti-strike laws. The 2019 Tory manifesto promised legally-mandated minimum service requirements during transport workers’ strikes. Where such laws exist in other countries, they often mandate unions to agree with employers, sometimes via an arbitration body, to exempt a portion of their membership from participation in a strike, in order to ensure the minimum service. In other words, they turn unions into administrators of scabbing. The...

Defiance is not the magic bullet

One excuse for not actively campaigning against the new Tory anti-strike laws now is the claim that the unions can find ways to get round them. Another, more militant-sounding, is that political campaigning is not worth bothering with — tame stuff compared to defying the laws once imposed. In fact, defiance is not a magic bullet. In Australia, where anti-strike laws are much fiercer than in Britain, it is almost routine for unions to break the laws and be fined. The New South Wales Teachers’ Federation was fined $60,000 in October 2022 for calling strikes. But the trend is for that sort of...

Anti-strike law fight must start now

Newly “elected” TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak (he was the sole candidate in an election in which the electorate consists only of members of the TUC General Council) has responded to the threat of harsh new anti-strike laws by saying that the TUC will “challenge them legally”, and make the Tories “pay a high political price”. The exact nature of the price, and how payment will be exacted, is not specified. Nowak has also said he doesn’t want to “go back to the 1980s”, implying he opposes the full repeal of all the anti-strike and anti-union laws, despite TUC congress having repeatedly voted...

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