Anti-union laws

The Daily Mail on 22 February carried an article reporting on “top secret” government plans to undermine strikes, with the Cabinet Office setting up a special “unit” to “prevent Britain grinding to a standstill in the event of mass public sector walkouts.” According to the Mail , the plans include developing relationships with private firms to provide scab labour to break strikes, and establishing special contingency arrangements in key areas to maintain services during any industrial action. The Mail claims that government minister Francis Maude has analysed the workforce at thousands of...

Unite has declared its own recent ballot of cabin crew workers, which returned a 78.5% majority in favour of strike action, unlawful. This action sets a new and worrying precedent in the ongoing battle against Britain’s anti-union laws. If Unite, the country’s biggest union, is now so jumpy that it will do the bosses’ and courts’ work for them the ruling class will only grow in confidence. Unite’s decision is all the more bizarre given that the last time BA attempted to seek a High Court injunction against their strike ballot, the union appealed and had the injunction overturned. Senior union...

Co-ordinated industrial action by trade unions to halt (at least some of) the massive attacks on workers’ jobs and living standards by this Tory-led Government is promoted as the current main demand of the trade union left. Perhaps it should be, but as Marxists we need to face a few uncomfortable truths about focussing on this strategy alone. The only co-ordinated action being seriously contemplated by trade union leaders is against the attack on public sector pensions. Of course the public pensions issue is important and it may well be possible to win a round of national ballots on the...

According to the Morning Star , a meeting of all TUC unions on 28 January "united to beat Con-Dem axemen" and "thrashed out plans" for action. Bob Crow, general secretary of the rail union RMT, one of the TUC's most militant unions, declared that the meeting sent a "clear message" to the government. Sadly, it's not true. The union leaders reaffirmed the TUC's 26 March demonstration against cuts - but that was already fixed - and beyond that resolved only not to rule out coordinated strikes as a "last resort". The meeting may even have worked against industrial action, by pressing all union...

Courts and the Government are making a two-pronged attack on the right to strike. It becomes more and more urgent for the unions to launch a big political campaign for union rights. On 19 January, Justice Michael Tugendhat granted Serco Docklands, the operators of the Docklands Light Railway, an injunction (legal order) banning a strike by the rail union RMT due to happen on 20-21 January (see page 2). Judges’ interpretations have pushed the circumstances in which bosses can get injunctions wider and wider, and this judgment pushed them wider still. Yes, the RMT had given Serco a list of the...

A judge has banned a planned strike by RMT members on Docklands Light Railway, issuing an injunction that makes it even harder for trade unions to hold lawful strikes. RMT balloted members employed by Serco Docklands over several issues, including attacks on pension rights, differences in working hours, and the sacking of two members. The union's ballot did not break existing anti-union law, so the judge announced an extension of the law and declared that the ballot notification did not meet its requirements and therefore the strike could not go ahead! Legislation dating back to 2004 states...

Prime minister David Cameron declared in Parliament on 12 January that he was "happy to look at" plans for new anti-strike laws, to come on top of the Thatcher laws which already restrict workers' rights in Britain more than in any other big wealthy country. Boris Johnson, the Tory mayor of London, and the bosses' federation CBI have already called for harsher laws, specifically a law to ban strikes unless the ballot shows a 40% (CBI) or 50% (Johnson) majority for strike among all those entitled to vote , not just among those voting. On that criterion of a majority, neither Johnson nor Cameron...

“There will be no return to the trade union laws of the 1970s. Laws banning secondary and flying pickets, on secondary action, on ballots before strikes and for union elections – on all the essential elements of the 1980s laws – will stay,” wrote the then Labour Party leader Tony Blair in an article published in the “Daily Mail” in 1997. In the same article Blair went on to stress: “Even after the changes the Labour Party is proposing in this area (trade union rights), Britain will remain with the most restrictive trade union laws anywhere in the western world.” This was a shameless ‘pitch’ to...

John McDonnell MP’s Private Member’s Bill, which would have stopped courts ruling out strike ballots on small technicalities, was defeated in Parliament on 22 October. Ed Miliband, when standing for Labour leader, volunteered to back moves to stop judges invalidating strike ballots on the basis of minor errors. But Labour’s front bench refused to back McDonnell’s Bill, and would not mobilise enough Labour MPs to get the Bill on to its next stage. A total of 89 Labour MPs turned up to support the Bill, including two who acted as tellers in a procedural vote of 87 to 27. But the Bill fell into a...