The latest round of action by teachers, nurses and civil servants in the ongoing battle against the cost-of-living crisis could potentially be the last set of strikes to be held before the government’s new anti-union Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill comes into law.
The Tories were defeated in the House of Lords at the end of April but are set to push ahead when the Bill returns to the Commons for the last time.
The new law will allow Secretaries of State in six sectors – health services, education, transport, fire and rescue, nuclear safety, and border staff – to make ‘minimum service regulations’ empowering employers to issue a ‘Work Notice’ to a trade union specifying which individuals they require to continue to work during a strike.
If a union “fails to take reasonable steps” to ensure that its members identified in a Work Notice follow an instruction to work, it will lose its protection from liability and subsequent claims for damages. An individual worker continuing to take part in a strike contrary to a Work Notice instruction will lose their current automatic protection from unfair dismissal.
This is a draconian attack on workers’ rights which must be resisted at every level – including by Labour-controlled public employers in local government, education, transport and fire and rescue authorities, and the Welsh government.
The Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf promised the Scottish TUC Congress on 17 April that the Scottish government “will never issue or enforce a single work notice” under the new legislation. So why not the Labour First Minister of Wales, the London Mayor Sadiq Khan, or the Labour ‘Metro-Mayors’ of Liverpool, Manchester, North Tyne, South Yorkshire, the West of England and West Yorkshire? Or Labour council candidates standing in the 4 May local elections?
Build the pressure for non-compliance
The key to making the new anti-union law inoperable is action organised across the trade union movement. This must include preparations for a one-day general strike if the legislation is used to levy punitive damages against an individual union exercising its democratic right to take strike action.
But, as the Fire Brigades Union general secretary Matt Wrack said in response to Humza Yousaf’s pledge at the Scottish TUC, pressurising public sector employers to refuse to apply work notices – and to end contracts with any outside employer who does so – is another weapon that must be used.
That applies to local councils as well – especially the 120 or so Labour-controlled councils across Britain with rights and powers in education, transport, fire and rescue services, and health.
While Starmer’s Labour has voted against the Minimum Service Level law in parliament, it is clear, however, that it will take more than just polite lobbying to compel their local representatives on public authorities to support non-compliance and refuse to implement the Act.
That must include standing trade union candidates in elections against any councillor who collaborates with anti-union laws.
