On the streets against the new anti-strike laws!

Submitted by Matthew on 20 May, 2015 - 9:32 Author: Editorial

The unions and the labour movement should launch a life-or-death campaign to stop the Tories’ planned new anti-union laws, starting with a mass street demonstration.

Britain already has “the most restrictive trade union laws anywhere in the western world”, as Tony Blair complacently told the Daily Mail in 1997.

Now the Tories plan to ban public service strikes unless the ballot majority for the strike comes to at least 40% of the workers balloted.

Only 24% of the electorate voted Tory on 7 May, and they think that’s enough to decide the government!

But in strike ballots, essentially, they want to count non-voters as voting against.

In fact strike turnouts in the public services are better than ballot turnouts. Workers are willing to lose pay to join strikes which they don’t even vote for.

Why? They lack confidence, and, tacitly or deliberately, prefer to see whether more confident workmates return a majority for the strike, in which case they’ll join it. Or they just don’t get round to voting. Under already-existing Tory law, the ballot has to be by post, and strike votes don’t get the same publicity as national and local government elections.

Workplace votes, rather than ballot papers sent to home addresses, would get a better turnout in strike votes. But the Tories won’t allow that.

The Tories also plan to rule strike ballots invalid everywhere, not just in the public sector, unless the turnout is at least 50%. In disputes involving workforces scattered over different workplaces, that turnout is hard to get.

A general rule that votes don’t count unless the turnout is 50% would mean no elected local government. When leading Tory Boris Johnson was elected Mayor of London in 2012 — in a contest with vast publicity, so almost no-one could forget to vote — the turnout was just 38%.

Ballot votes for strikes should follow the same rule as other votes: those who don’t take part aren’t counted.

The Tories will also allow bosses to use agency workers to break strikes, repealing laws which ban that strike-breaking.

The effect will be to make legal and effective strikes very difficult except in compact workforces specialised enough that the boss can’t easily use agency workers for strike-breaking.

The union leaders’ initial response has been sluggish and timid. TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady spoke at the Fire Brigades Union conference (12-15 May) and said we must “box clever”, “find new alliances”, and “confuse our opponents”. Protest strikes and demonstrations against the planned new laws were off her agenda. Anyway, she said, we should wait until the TUC General Council gets round to discussing this at its meeting in June.

The Campaign for Trade Union Freedom (CTUF) was formed in 2013 by the merger of previously-existing campaigns, one of which was a grouping initiated by a conference which Workers’ Liberty was central to organising, in 1997. Sadly, it’s been proof that broader unity can sometimes mean burying the active minority under bureaucratic inertia.

CTUF is sponsored by all the main unions, but hasn’t even posted a comment on its website about the new Tory plans.

Most unions have made no prominent comment on their websites. The Unite union says that the Tory plans are “a terrible shame”, but “we are open for constructive discussions with ministers”. That’s about as militant as it gets. Labour Party leaders have said nothing.

If the leaders won’t speak up for workers’ rights, then the rank and file must! We must raise a storm which shakes the union leaders out of their demoralisation and forces them out onto the streets.

“Tiny elite rule”, says member of that elite

“Our democracies are increasingly captured by a ruling class that seeks to perpetuate its privileges.

“Regardless of who’s in office, the same people are in power. It is a democracy in name only, operating on behalf of a tiny elite no matter the electoral outcome.’

“It seems today that political legitimacy stems not from votes, but money. The more of it you have, the more that government pays attention to your concerns”.

Steve Hilton, who says this, should know. He is now an academic in the USA, but was director of strategy for David Cameron from 2010 to 2012. His background: private school, Oxford, then straight to a job in Tory Central Office.

He is married to Rachel Whetstone, a Google boss, a long-time Tory adviser and grand-daughter of Antony Fisher, who founded both of Britain’s two main right-wing think-tanks, the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Adam Smith Institute.

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