Tory proposals in the Trade Union Bill to impose new industrial action ballot thresholds for turnout (50%) and support (in 'essential services' 40% of all balloted) 'would make almost all strikes illegal, particularly in large and dispersed workforces where postal ballots rarely achieve this' writes Michael Meacher MP.
http://www.leftfutures.org/2015/06/tory-trade-union-bill-is-an-attack-on-a-fundamental-human-right/
The proposals if implemented (without a return to workplace balloting) will severely undermine national bargaining with union's unable to exert leverage in future negotiations on pay, pensions etc.
The Trade Union Bill is a political attack on trade union rights as vicious as any law enacted during the Thatcher era. A major campaign inside and outside of Parliament is required to resist this draconian legislation.
On the face of it the requirement to have 50% of the vote, or a turn out of 50% as a minimum before representative action can be legitimately determined, may seem like a reasonable standpoint, however it poses some serious questions for the ‘Mother of all Parliaments’.
The Prime Minister has eventually succumbed to the lobbying of the most aggressive anti-trade unionists in his party and the Conservative manifesto for 2015 will include a pledge to impose a minimum threshold of 50% for all future trade union ballots on industrial action.
In recent political opinion polls UKIP has registered as high as 13% and in upcoming elections will be a significant electoral force, particularly in May’s European Parliament elections. It will be looking to surpass its success in 2009 – when it forced Labour into third place in the popular vote and bagged 13 seats – the biggest representation of any right wing xenophobic party in the Parliament. A recent article on the UKIP Daily website examined the party’s relationship with trade unions and working class. It repeated many anti union positions associated with the Tory Party – that unions are unrepresentative and merely a ‘special interest group’ on a par with big corporations, acting only in our self interest. One thing the author is correct on, however, is that few trade unionists committed to collectivism and a welfare state will find appeal in UKIP’s stance as a ‘small government, low tax party’
http://www.ukipdaily.com/trade-unions-working-classes-ukip-reach-confuse-two/
For more information on UKIP attitudes to workers’ rights read here:
http://unisonactive.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/ukip-no-friend-of-workers-or-trade.html
The UK's latest anti trade union law - the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trades Union Administration Bill - in its ideological venom exceeds the worst of the measures introduced during the Thatcher era, according to Victoria Philips of Thompsons Solicitors. 'The detail of the proposed reforms is complex – annual membership audits, new Certification Officer powers, enforcement orders, a requirement for unions with over 10,000 members to appoint an assurer, self-certification for smaller unions and exemption for new unions. It’s the very opposite of the Red Tape Challenge. Oh what a laugh they must have had in Cabinet with that one.'
http://www.unionhome.org.uk/?p=2676&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=an-outrageous-attack-on-the-largest-democratic-movement-in-this-country
The current edition of the Economist carries an article on union decline and claims that social movements such as London Citizens are 'in some ways... taking the place of trade unions - which these days have programmes but little power.' This superficial theory ignores the fact that unions such as UNISON have been and continue to be integral to Citizens, and in the case of its forerunner TELCO, East London UNISON branches and the UNISON General Political Fund were instrumental in putting it on the map:
http://www.economist.com/news/21567424-trade-unions-are-beginning-learn-community-activists-fight-glower
Conservative MP Jesse Norman has assumed the mantle of premier trade union basher from his discredited parliamentary colleague Aidan Burley MP. Yesterday, as part of an orchestrated campaign by the Tory Party's far right, Norman put his name to a Private Member's Bill seeking to force unions to refund employers the pay of union representatives who carry out union duties at the workplace. Thankfully, Labour MP's mobilised to defeat the Bill by 79 votes:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/house_of_commons/newsid_9675000/9675068.stm
The Trade Union Reform Campaign led by the disgraced Tory MP Aidan Burley, is the latest in a long line of business-funded union busting organisations in Britain. The most notorious being the Economic League, founded in 1919 by a group of industrialists and a Tory MP under the name of National Propaganda. It was wound up in 1994 after its McCarthyite activities in blacklisting workers were exposed:
http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Spies_at_Work
On 30 November, the day of the Great Pensions Strike, Tory leader David Cameron said in a letter of support to a shadowy front group that ‘using taxpayers money to fund trade union activity cannot be sustained, either morally or economically.’ Cameron provided no evidence to support his assertion but then the ideologues in the gallery he was pandering to don’t need much convincing. The Zelo Street blog has brilliantly exposed the forces from the Conservative Party’s right wing who are staffing the latest anti union organisation:
http://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2011/12/welcome-to-more-astroturf.html
