Anti-union laws

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...

On the streets to oppose anti-strike laws

The Tories’ Transport Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill is already making its way through Parliament, and Rishi Sunak has promised “tough new laws” to extend legislative restrictions on workers’ ability to take action. There has been no official announcement about what new laws, but much talk about extending the outright ban on strikes which currently applies to the military, police, and prison guards to other sectors, possibly including the NHS and the fire service. Senior Tories, including former Transport Secretary Grant Shapps and former Prime Minister Liz Truss, have previously...

The "minimum service" law in France

As a wave of strikes sweep France, beginning with oil and petrol refinery workers but spreading into other industries like transport, the French state has started to use some of its legal weaponry against striking workers. The most dramatic tool that the French state can deploy against strikers is “requisitioning”. Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne instructed prefects (regional chiefs of civil service and police) to start using this power to order strikers back to work. The law allows this power to be used in emergencies where there is a threat to “good order, health, peace and public safety”...

When other workers struck to back the NHS

NHS workers on strike over pay, 1982 In the 1980s large numbers of other workers went on strike directly in support of NHS workers’ demands. In 1982 there was solidarity action on a scale comparable to the 1972 strikes that freed the Pentonville Five or even the 1926 General Strike. During the 1982 NHS pay strike, the biggest in the health service’s history, many hundreds of thousands of other workers struck in support. On a national day of action in September, over two million workers took part in one way or another (there were about a million NHS workers). A hundred thousand demonstrated in...

3 December union rights conference - the labour movement must do better

RMT general secretary Mick Lynch speaking As strikes burgeon in the UK, we are also seeing a resurgence of the decades-long drive to legally suppress strikes. The edifice of multiple anti-union/anti-strike laws introduced under the Thatcher and Major governments was completed by 1993; the 1997-2010 Labour governments did nothing to touch these laws; and the next attack, the Trade Union Act, was not passed till 2016. Then, in July 2022, we had the legalisation of agency labour for strike-breaking, and now an attack on transport workers’ right to strike. The Tories are not moving as fast or on...

Capitalism creates its own coffin-maker

Around 50 members of Unite, employed as coffin-makers by Co-op Funeralcare in Govan (Glasgow), began a third week-long strike on 5 December. This follows earlier week-long strikes in October and November, after members had rejected a massively-below-inflation pay offer of 3% in April. Funeralcare eventually entered pay talks only after members voted overwhelmingly in favour of strike action. But Funeralcare tabled an even worse offer during the pay talks – 4% this year, and 5% next year, amounting to two years of successive pay cuts in real terms. The mood on the picket line at Bogmoor Place...

Union fightback stops anti-strike law

Doug Ford, the right-wing “Progressive Conservative” premier of Ontario, Canada, has backed down on anti-union legislation after a union fightback. “We harnessed our collective power when it was needed most. Ontario workers, and especially the brave CUPE education workers, defended the right to strike for all people in Canada,” said Patty Coates, Ontario Federation of Labour President. And more: “Until education workers bargain a fair collective agreement, we will not stand down; we are ready to fight”. On 4 November, education workers in OPSEU-SEFPO, another union, walked out in solidarity...

Anti-union laws aim to smash school strikes in Canada

The anti-union, right-wing state government is attempting to crush strike action by poorly paid school support staff in Ontario, Canada. The workers, who are cleaners, school secretaries, librarians and teaching assistants, are members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE). Inflation in Ontario is now around 7% and the union is demanding a wage increase of 11.7% (the equivalent of about £2.10 per hour). The state offered 2.5% for the poorest paid workers, and less for others; negotiations broke down last month. CUPE has 55,000, mainly women members, in Ontario schools. Doug Ford’s...

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