The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 15th December 2023
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 15th December 2023
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Last weekend a remarkably rare event took place: the Trades Union Congress (TUC), rising like Lazarus from the dead, actually stirred itself into action and held a special congress at its London HQ for the first time in 41 years.
This was concerned with the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act. Published in January and passed in July, it intends to force trade unionists to provide a minimum level of services during strikes in the health services, education, fire and rescue, border security, transport and nuclear decommissioning. The measure was not mentioned in the 2019 Tory manifesto that saw them take many formerly solid Labour seats in the north east of England. It is a response to the upsurge in industrial action in 2022. Although it applies across mainland Britain, the Welsh and SNP governments have said they will not apply it. Some Labour English city mayors have taken the same steps. As it puts the onus on employers to issue a “work notice” to implement the Act however, it could easily come into effect in private sector disputes in these places. A previous measure that only applied to the transport sector was introduce the October 2022 but has not yet been implemented.
The main provision of the Act is that if unions involved in industrial action do not provide minimum service levels then unions lose immunity from being sued by the employer for economic loss and workers will lose the long-standing protection from unfair dismissal for striking. Hefty fines for defaulting unions and even sequestration of their assets are also provided for in the Act.
The Act is notably short on detail about what constitutes a “minimum level of service”. This will be left to the Business Secretary, which effectively means the law can be made up on the hoof. In effect it means that strike action would be rendered ineffective.
In the recent NHS strikes unions made plans to ensure emergency cover at hospitals, but that is not enough for the Tories. About a fifth of the workforce are now under the rules of the Act. But make no mistake. We won’t stand by and let workers get sacked for defending their pay and conditions. And we won’t rest until this malicious, unnecessary and unworkable law has been repealed.
When it was first proposed, the General Secretary of the TUC deplored it because it would “prolong disputes and poison industrial relations, leading to more frequent strikes”.
In the House of Lords even crusty Tory peers thought it was a bad piece of work.
And even Sir Keir Starmer says the Act is so dreadful that Labour will repeal it in his first 100 days in office – although we are still waiting for the repeal of the Tories’ anti-union legislation from the Thatcher years.
The TUC has belatedly announced a national march and rally to oppose the measure. To demonstrate the urgency, this will take place in Cheltenham. From the mid-1980s until the coming of Tony Blair this was the scene of the annual rally to oppose the Thatcher’s government’s ban on trade unions at the GCHQ spy centre, but there are more convenient venues.
The TUC also said that as a result of Saturday’s congress “we agreed to continue our campaign of opposition and non-compliance – across workplaces and across the country”. That is not very encouraging as the limited opposition so far has been ineffective.
The TUC also promised to “continue our wider legal challenge to these undemocratic laws – leaving no stone unturned internationally and in UK courts”. Many trendy legal practices will be licking their lips at the prospect of more fees.
It said that it would “Call on all employers and public bodies to oppose this counterproductive legislation” and even threatened to “Name and shame any employer who deploys a work notice as anti-union and anti-worker”. That is a pointless threat because any employer using the Act would have to do so publicly.
One might legitimately ask why the TUC did not do its mobilising during the passage of the legislation rather than wait for it to become law.
Paddy Lillis, General Secretary for shop-workers union USDAW, used uncharacteristically militant language to warm that: “Make no mistake, any member threatened with a work notice will feel the collective strength of the trade union movement, representing five and a half million workers, standing with them in solidarity and support and unions will work together to deploy the most effective tactics possible.”
Rousing speeches are all very well, but trade unions are not in a healthy state. Membership is at a historically low level, despite the recent upsurge in strike action.
There are only 6,250,000 trade unionists out of a workforce of 28,300,000 – of these 5.5 million are in TUC-affiliated unions. Only in 1938 was there an absolutely smaller number of trade union members and that was with a much smaller workforce.
Already some unions have been engaged in discreet talks about implementing the measure. Community, the former Iron and Steel Trades Confederation which curiously represents nursery school teachers and others, complains that Education Secretary has broken off talks with them and other unions on the fine print.
Helen Osgood, the union’s National Officer for Education & Early Years commented: “The talks are reported to have collapsed, but the first that we heard of this was in the press. As far as we were aware, tentative conversations were still ongoing.” That does not sound very militant.