ATCHER’S DAY your voice
Without a political fund Unite could not campaign against the influence of extreme right-wing parties such as UKIP and the BNP during council or parliamentary or European elections.
Once a union has a political fund, members then choose whether or not to contribute to it or not. So even if you think you do not want to contribute it is still important to vote yes – so that those who do want to pay towards Unite campaigns are free to do so.
Detailed information will be available later this spring and you’ll receive full ballot information by post. So stand by to vote.
200 years and still fighting…
Two hundred years of union campaigning and we’re still going strong. No one has given working people anything – the unions have had to fight the whole way. And the fight must go on.
1799-1800 Combination Acts make virtually all trade union activity illegal
1836-7 Mass campaign secures release of Tolpuddle
Martyrs 1871 Gladstone’s Trade Union Act legalises unions
1888 Strike by match girls at Bryant & May factory in London’s East End
1901 Taff Vale judgment makes union funds liable for damages caused by strikes
1906 Trade Disputes Act reverses Taff Vale judgment
1913 Trade Union Act gives unions the right to set up political funds with members able to opt out
1920 Trade union membership 8.3m 1926 TUC calls general strike on May
4 over miners’ wage cuts
1927 Trade Disputes Act restricts picketing; sympathetic strike action illegal
1945 First majority Labour government
1946 Repeal of Trades Disputes Act 1927
19 uniteWORKS January/February 2013
1974 Labour government elected; Health and Safety at Work Act passed
1975 Equal Pay Act 1980 Trade union membership 13m
1980-1993 Six employment acts restrict industrial action by requiring pre-strike ballots, outlawing secondary action, and restricting picketing
1984-5 Year-long miners’ strike over pit closures
1985-6 Thatcher’s attempt to strangle union campaigns backfires as members of all 31 unions with political funds vote Yes to keep them
1986 Print workers’ dispute with News International
1997 Labour government elected
1998 National Minimum Wage Act sets legal minimum rates
1999 Employment Relations Act introduces right to union recognition where a majority want it
2011 Half a million people join TUC march against spending cuts
2011 Two million public sector workers in 29 unions strike on November 30 over attacks on pensions
2012 TUC holds marches for A Future That Works in London, Glasgow and Belfast on October 20
Pat Mantle
Clifford Harper
Stefano Cagnoni/
reportdigital.co.uk
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