Anti-union laws

For decades the labour movement has failed to oppose the anti-union laws. The result? New ones

Hot on the heels of the law allowing use of agency workers for strike-breaking , Tory leadership candidate Liz Truss has proposed : • Action within thirty days of taking office to introduce the “minimum service requirement” outlawing all-out strikes in certain sectors that the Tories pledged in their 2019 manifesto for transport – but extended to other sectors too. But also: • Doubling the minimum notice period for strikes from two to four weeks; • Raising the threshold for strikes in certain "essential" sectors from 40% of the whole eligible membership voting to 50% and extending this to the...

New anti-union law threat

After threatening to impose a “ minimum service requirement ” in transport, the government has now brandished another threat against rail workers — repeal of the ban on agency workers being used as strike-breakers. Introduced by Blair in 2003, this law has not prevented the use of agency workers for union-busting more generally (e.g., just after it was passed, in the Gate Gourmet dispute and, just now, at P&O ). Nor is it clear the Tories will actually repeal it: the idea was flagged up by transport secretary Grant Shapps to the Sunday Telegraph , not officially announced. They are trying to...

Debating tactics for local government pay fight

The local government conference of the public services union Unison on 12-13 June was dominated by discussion on how to win ballots for strikes on pay. A ballot on the 1.75% pay offer for the year from April 2021, done between 5 December 2021 and 14 January 2022, fell flat with a turnout of only 14.5%. 50% minimum turnout is required for strike ballots in public services under the Trade Union Act 2016. For the year from April 2022, unions in local government (Unite and GMB as well as Unison) put in a claim on 6 June for £2,000 or RPI-matching increases (around 11%). A response from the...

How to defeat “minimum service” threat

The Tories have revived the plan, included in their 2019 election manifesto, to effectively ban all-out strikes in transport through a law requiring a “minimum service level”. They are obviously trying to intimidate transport workers in the run up to what could be huge national rail strikes in the summer (though in fact a minimum service law could scarcely be got in place for a long time to come). Despite the manifesto pledge, transport secretary Grant Shapps has said only that they are considering such a law, if things “got to that point”, despite the manifesto commitment. Even if a minimum...

Tories threaten new anti-strike laws

In response to RMT's ballot of Network Rail and 15 mainline TOCs, transport secretary Grant Shapps has reminded the world that the Tories have a manifesto commitment, from 2019, to impose new laws to restrict transport workers' strikes by imposing "minimum service requirements".

The government has...

Nationalise P&O! Reinstate the workers!

The CEO of P&O Ferries, which recently sacked 800 workers, has told a parliamentary committee that his company deliberately broke employment law to avoid a confrontation with trade unions. Tory Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has said P&O must reinstate the workers, because the government will legislate for the minimum wage to apply to ferry workers. P&O has taken on new hires at £5.50 an hour. On 29 March, P&O replied that it wouldn’t reinstate. On top of paying a lower hourly rate, it wants to pay workers only for the time actually on the ship, rather than a weekly rate for 24 weeks a year...

Anti-Union Laws Strike Down Cross Country Strikes

RMT had named more strike dates on Cross Country in the ongoing fight to defend the safety-critical guards’ role. However, the employer called in the lawyers, and the union has called off the strikes and cancelled the dispute.

Britain’s anti-union laws are so harsh and unjust that the mere...

Diary of a Tube worker: "We are the union"

It’s always easier to “talk union” on the job when the union is balloting for industrial action. I often tell workmates, “the union isn’t an insurance policy, it’s a tool for us to win change at work.” It’s easier to grasp that when we’re voting about whether to go on strike. Workmates for whom our recent ballot on the Tube was the first experience of an industrial action ballot, and who aren’t well-versed in the restrictions of the anti-union laws, had pretty good instincts about it all. “I don’t get it,” says one, “why can’t we vote online? Or set up a ballot box in the mess room and all...

Look again at Section 44 (John Moloney's column)

With the withdrawal of Covid restrictions in England, there is increasing rhetoric about an employers’ drive to get workers back into offices. It’s not entirely clear as yet how that will play out across the civil service and whether departments will be setting quotas for the number of workers they want back. We’re meeting the Cabinet Office on Tuesday 25 January to discuss this. The Daily Mail is already promoting a narrative that union opposition to workers being forced back into offices is somehow sabotaging the country’s recovery. It’s clear that the Prime Minister is looking, using those...

Make unions launch pay offensive!

The latest Consumer Price Index for inflation is a 5.4% rise from December 2020 to December 2021. Retail Price Index inflation was 7.5%. The price rises are especially big on basic items which figure large in poorer households’ budgets: food, energy. Energy prices are set to rise much higher in 2022, with world-market oil and gas price rises working through. The Resolution Foundation think-tank reckons that 27% of all households will be in “fuel stress” in 2022. A 2013 shift by the Tory-Lib-Dem government then to “cut the green crap”, supposedly as a cost-saving measures, is feeding through to...

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