Cameron is poised to become even more Thatcher than Thatcher. According to the Daily Mail he is in 'secret' talks with Ministers and Tory Mayor of London Boris Johnson over the introduction of even more anti trade union laws. http://bit.ly/aeeRtF
It seems that CBI calls for stronger measures to prevent trade union resistance to the massive public sector cuts are being enthusiastically met by Ministers who are expecting trade union members to resist the 40% cuts.
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/64789,business,cbi-urges-stricter-strike-laws
Specifically the Government and the CBI are looking at two elements to defend their ability to sack and slash. They want to establish a law that makes it necessary for a union to have at least 40% of all the members balloted vote 'yes' for action to be legal and they want to reduce the statutory consultation/notice time from the current 90 days to 30 days for all redundancies. It is not lost on trade unionists that an announcement of redundancies will effectively take place within 4 weeks whilst a legal ballot for industrial action will be impossible to achieve in most cases in the same time period.
It is also being claimed that apparently Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats have not been in the front end of these discussions. This does make a contrast with Clegg's 'Your Freedoms' initiative, where we are invited to nominate laws that we would wish to see scrapped. A more worthless exercise has not been seen since the 'traffic cones hotline' established by a failing and floundering John Major government desperate to find an issue - any issue - that would revive their popularity. Any progressives left in the Liberal Democrat party might like to consider why they are not party to Thathcherite discussions about restricting even further the rights of people at work but are left to play with blog sites about 'red tape'. what happened to their radical civil liberties agenda - does that not include people about to made redundant or voting for strike action?
Brendan Barber has called it right
"Any further restrictions would be extremely unfair and almost certainly breach the UK's international human rights obligations. The new government's commitments to civil liberties are welcome, but the CBI seems to think human rights stop at the workplace door," he said.
"And while we expect the CBI to lobby against rights at work, please spare us the hypocrisy of pretending that a cut in the period for consultation over redundancy is for the benefit of employees. A 30-day period does not provide unions – let alone staff unrepresented by unions – any real chance to develop alternatives or effectively negotiate changes."
