As Professor Keith Ewing said at UNISON's national pay seminar on Wednesday "Labour filled its parliamentary programme with constitutional issues and criminal justice. The Tories are not interested in the constitution so an easy win would be employment rights.
"Inevitably if public sector workers attempt national strikes over pay or pensions they could easily target national ballots by taking away the exemption that allows aggregation and insist on majority ballot results in every workplace".
Such procedural and technical tightening of the existing rules and of restricting TU facilities, all fit in with ideological objectives that want to see the public sector reduced, trade union powers further diminished and more de-regulation in the employment relationship.
If it isn't the CWU fighting the privatisation of the Post Office it will be UNISON, as Paul Routledge says in a caustic look at Cameron's backgound. "I reckon Cameron has in his sights UNISON, the big public service union that doesn’t have many strikes but knows how to win them – like the binmen’s dispute in Leeds – and gives strong support to Labour". http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/columnists/routledge/2010/01/15/despot-david-cameron-a-stranger-to-the-dignity-of-labour-115875-21968586/
With with the curent media fury over slow aid responses to Haiti, rabid anti trade union stories like this will appear again and again in the press over the next few weeks.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6982999.ece
