Anti-union laws

Trust rules out "work notices": make others do the same

United Learning (UL), the largest Academy Trust in England, operating 89 schools and employing 7,000 staff, has stated it will not use the Minimum Service Law (MSL) to issue "work notices"

“Minimum” is 100%?

Sometimes, the clarion calls in the most inauspicious of places. Little did I know when I crossed the threshold into Cadbury World, already eyeing up the torso-sized bags of misshapen chocolate rejects in the shop, that the gloriuous crescendo of a mid-week Birmingham trip was to be derailed. As I get the phone out to find the ticket bought from a janky third-party website, I see that the government has published the Minimum Service Level regulations for fire services. The level has been set at 73% of fire engines being on the run on strike days. This is utterly farcical. Because of over a...

Minimum Service: we need open defiance

Train drivers’ union Aslef has, by calling an additional five-day strike,forced LNER, the only Train Operating Company which threatened to issue “work notices” against the union’s pay strikes between 30 Jan and 5 Feb, under the Tories’ new Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act, to back down from that threat. Aslef’s success provides unions with one clear tactic for confronting bosses’ attempts to use anti-strike laws to undermine industrial action. But it will not be a silver bullet. What happens if further strike dates fail to produce a climbdown? What if the original plan is for an indefinite...

LNER calls off "work notices" threat

BBC News reported on 22 January that "a source" said Train Operating Company LNER had told the Aslef train drivers' union that it no longer intends to put minimum service levels (MSLs) in place.

Activist Agenda: campaigns and info

A list of many campaigns that Workers' Liberty activists are involved with and support, plus info about other organising and resources.

Minimum Service Law: win “no work notice” pledges!

The TUC has complied with its congress decision for a national demonstration against the Tories’ new Minimum Service anti-strike law, but called it in Cheltenham ( 27 January , Montpellier Gardens, GL50 1UL). The official reason is to celebrate the fight for union rights at GCHQ, which is in Cheltenham. However, Cheltenham is neither a big industrial city, nor a labour-movement stronghold, nor central to transport networks so that demonstrators can easily travel from the major cities. We will still work to make the protest as big as we can, but other modes of resistance will surely be...

After the TUC 9 December congress

Perhaps the most significant sentence in the resolution passed is a commitment that unions will “refuse to tell [their] members to cross a picket line.”

Making “non-compliance” a reality

The Trades Union Congress meets for a special congress on Saturday 9 December, to discuss the new “minimum service levels” anti-strike laws and resistance to them. The congress is scheduled only for a few hours, and it seems likely most unions’ delegations will be just senior national officials. There has been no opportunity for wider democratic scrutiny of whatever proposal the TUC general council plans to put to the congress, and therefore no opportunity for rank-and-file bodies within unions to propose amendments or additions. A lobby is planned outside the congress, but there is no...

Minimum Service law can be beaten

The government has now set the minimum service levels in three of the sectors covered by the new Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act. For Border Force and some HM Passport Office staff, the minimum service stipulates that services “should be provided at a level that means they are no less effective than if a strike were not taking place”, and must “ensure all ports and airports remain open.” For ambulance staff, the minimum service level says “vital services” must continue “throughout any strike”, with all life-threatening calls, or calls “where there is no reasonable clinical alternative to...

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