Anti-Union Judges Strike Again

Posted in Tubeworker's blog on ,

A judge has banned the DLR strike that was supposed to happen today and tomorrow - and his ruling further tightens the anti-democratic grip that the anti-union laws have on our right to fight back.

RMT's ballot notification had not broken any existing anti-union law - so the judge invented a new law and declared that the strike did not meet its requirements! The law requires the union to notify the employer of the exact number of members in each grade and location that it is balloting, and explain how it puts this information together. That is quite bad enough - it's like requiring a non-League football due to play Premier League opposition in the Cup to send over its full team sheet and tactics a week in advance without any requirement for the other side to do the same. But even that wasn't enough for DLR management or the court. The judge ruled that the union's explanation of how it maintains its membership information has to be much more detailed than previously required, and banned the DLR strike because the notification did not meet requirements that up until that moment had not existed!

It is clear that these laws - and the judges who repeatedly extend them - serve the employers. They are not there to ensure fairness or democracy in the conduct of strikes, but to give employers the pretexts they need to deny us the right to stand up to them. They are part of the assault by employers, and their servants in government and in wigs, to batter down working-class resistance to their attacks.

Our unions need not to just denounce these anti-union laws and rulings, but to organise against them. We need a renewed, active, effective campaign for the right to strike, and we need to make ourselves strong enough to defy these laws.

Tubeworker topics
Trade Unions

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