Anti-union laws

Anti-union laws: "workers must defy injunctions"

What’s happening is three things. The first is that in disputes which involve large numbers of workers, the possibility of being able to apply for an injunction based on a failure in the balloting process is that much greater. More workers involved means more complexity in meeting the legal requirements, especially where there are many different grades of worker and they work at many different workplaces. The second is that in the last couple of years case law has set new precedents which widen the terrain for employers to apply for injunctions. One employment law firm has been key to pushing...

Journalists against the anti-union laws

On 19 May, journalists at Johnston Press became the latest workers to fall victim of a High Court injunction against planned strike action, on the basis of ballot discrepancies. Bizarrely Johnston Press, which owns many titles across the UK including the Sheffield Star , managed to convince the court that it employs no journalists, and that to be lawful industrial action needs to be balloted for against each individual subsidiary company. This despite company literature proclaiming that it employs 1,900. Jeremy Dear, general secretary of the NUJ, said: “Johnston Press management’s claim that...

What About The Ballots?

It was good news that the court overturned the ridiculous injunction against the British Airways cabin crew strike. If the court had upheld the injunction, it would have sent a message to all employers that they can ban ANY strike with the flimsiest pretext.

There is no justice in Britain's anti...

Network Rail and courts stop rail strike: abolish the anti-union laws!

Network Rail bosses’ successful use of anti-trade union laws to undermine a planned strike by signallers was the latest in a recent spate of actions by employers (particularly in the rail industry) that have seen High Court injunctions become a default bosses’ response to any big strike. The first planned strike by British Airways cabin crew workers was also declared illegal in a similar way. In both cases, employers cited “irregularities” with the balloting process as their reason for seeking the injunctions, and the courts agreed that the ballots had indeed been “irregular”. But what does...

Bosses use courts to undermine strikes... AGAIN

After pulling a similar stunt with the British Airways dispute, bosses (this time, Network Rail) on 1 April successfully sought a High Court injunction to prevent a democratically-mandated strike action from taking place. The court decision indicates that any large strike ballot decision can be blocked by an injunction, since any large ballot is bound to include a few errors, and judges are always likely to say that the "balance of convenience" favours instructing the union to ballot again rather than allowing the strike to go ahead. It confirms again the despicable nature of the decision by...

British Airways dispute: abolish the anti-union laws!

In early December, cabin crew working for British Airways voted — by a huge majority on a massive turnout — for strike action against job cuts and pay freezes. BA management went to court and, eventually, they got an injunction against the strike. The union has now announced a further strike ballot starting on 21 January. But it is a cumbersome process — the earliest BA workers will be able to strike is from the beginning of March! The December injunction was yet another example of how the law can be blatantly used against workers, squashing their “right” to strike. The BA workers’ union...

Support BA Cabin Crew Strike!

Just like us, British Airways cabin crew are transport workers facing attacks on their jobs, pay and conditions. Just like us, they work for a company that should be a public service but has been poisoned by privatisation and made into a profit-driven, cost-cutting enterprise. Just like us, their...

Anti-Union Laws Strike Again

Last month, an unelected, unaccountable, (probably) octogenarian, public-school-educated chap in a wig ruled that RMT's ballot for industrial action on EDF Powerlink was illegal.

It was something about the precise grade title of an engineer or a technician not being exactly "engineer" or...

Tories talk of strike ban

If they win the election, the Tories want to privatise the whole of Royal Mail. They also want to change the law to ban many of even those strikes still legal under the current anti-union laws. According to the Guardian (30 October): “The Tories are looking at introducing laws setting new minimum turnout thresholds for strike ballots on the basis that they can only be lawful disputes if a majority of those being called out on strike have voted for it in a ballot”. The Tories’ exact plans are unclear. When we phoned Tory Central Office, they could not tell us. But the Guardian report is one of...

Redmond O'Neill, Socialist Action and "respect for the dead"

Redmond O’Neill, a leader of the Socialist Action group, has died aged 55 of cancer. Because O’Neill was an official in Ken Livingstone’s London mayoral administration, his death has received wide attention, for instance in the Guardian . Ken Livingstone’s obituary describes him as a “lifelong revolutionary socialist and leading figure on the left for three decades”. In fact, for many years it has been an abuse of language to call O’Neill and his organisation socialist, or even really part of the left. It was not just their grim support for Stalinist and other ‘progressive’ authoritarian...

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