Rob Williams, Socialist Party industrial organiser
Trade union leaders have rushed to respond positively to the new Labour government restating its intention to repeal the (anti-) Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act. Its implementation would have forced unions to instruct a certain number of members to work during strike action.
The government has written to its departments, as well as the 12 metro mayors, about the changed position. This is a welcome step and has been achieved by the determination of militant unions and activists.
The National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) played a key role in a relentless campaign that included lobbying last year’s annual TUC Congress, which called a special Congress two months later.
Such was the pressure, that Special TUC passed a motion which set out arguably the most militant strategy for decades: “Support any worker subject to a work notice, including with support from across the trade union movement, if their employer disciplines them in any way… Ensure that where any affiliate is facing significant risk of sanctions because of this legislation, we convene an emergency meeting of the Executive Committee to consider options for providing practical, industrial, financial and/or political backing to that union… Call an urgent demonstration in the event a work notice is deployed and a union or worker is sanctioned in relation to a work notice.” It even raised taking illegal action by stating that the unions would “refuse to tell our members to cross a picket line”.
It was the train drivers’ union ASLEF that effectively rendered the Act inoperable. An attempt to issue a work notice at train operator LNER, which had fallen into government control, was met with the union escalating its strike action from one to five days. LNER management, and behind them the Tories, capitulated.
Starmer’s commitment to repeal the Act, while welcome, is on its own totally inadequate. It is essential that unions now demand the repeal of the 2016 Trade Union Act and all other Tory anti-union laws, going back to Thatcher.
The Trade Union Act enshrines undemocratic strike ballot thresholds, which means that no matter how many union members vote for action, it cannot go ahead unless the turnout is at least 50%. Yet if this had been applied in the general election, 58 MPs would have been barred from office, including Keir Starmer’s deputy, Angela Rayner. Starmer himself was only elected on a 54% turnout!
But the Tory anti-union laws go much further. For instance, they prevent solidarity action, even in the same workplace if workers are in a different union or, for example, in the same hospital but working for an outsourced company. Also, the POA prison officers’ union has correctly demanded that its members’ right to strike is brought back, after the last Labour government restored the Tory strike ban in 2007. That shameful act is a reminder that Thatcher and Major’s anti-union laws were, disgracefully, largely kept intact through 13 years of New Labour governments.
The unions must demand the repeal of all the anti-union legislation, and if such an undertaking isn’t given by TUC Congress in September, it must set out a militant strategy to mobilise union members for action.
