unions Fight is on for union rights


sponsoring the new labour law, was supported by just 38.3 per cent of the 74,000 people eligible to vote in his Bromsgrove constituency and his party as a whole received the backing of just 37 per cent of the electorate. Despite this – or perhaps because of it – the Conservatives are also setting out to destroy their main political opposition. Again the proposed measures over Labour party funding have a superficial reasonableness about them. It seems fair that union members should ‘opt in’ to a union’s political fund, rather than have to ‘opt out’ as they do now. The reality however is that if ministers press ahead with these plans, union donations to Labour, currently about £10 million a year, will almost certainly fall off a cliff. Predictably the Government does not envisage any restrictions on rich individuals funding the Conservative Party. Clearly the only fair system would be state funding of parties in proportion to the numbers voting for them. However, fairness is obviously not the object of the exercise. In the public sector ministers are seeking to cut off unions’ main source of income by ending ‘check-off’ – the arrangement by which employers deduct union subs from wages. Some 3.8 million workers pay their subscriptions by this method. They also plan to crack down on ‘facility time’ which allows union reps time to represent their members – and often solve problems before they become serious. And if the workforce leaps all the legal hurdles and walks


out, the Government intends to extend the use of criminal law to ensure that a picket line is restricted to six people and that the union nominates a ‘supervisor’ who will be held responsible for any transgressions and could face prison. In separate proposals the Business Secretary is proposing


Orwellian legislation which would place tight restrictions on the use of social media during disputes. Unions would be required to give 14 days’ notice that they intend to use Twitter, Facebook, websites and blogs during strikes. They will also have to set out what they intend to say in such postings and indicate whether they are going to use ‘loudspeakers, props, banners etc’ on picket lines. Unions would face unquantified fines if they infringed such regulations. If unions want to protest about all this, the Lobbying Act


will strictly limit their ability to campaign in the run-up to general elections. The legal onslaught has provoked Unite, Britain’s biggest union, to have second thoughts about its constitution, which dictates that it will always abide by the law. Recently the words ‘so far as may be lawful’ have been removed from the rules governing the union’s actions in recognition that a Conservative government will introduce laws to prevent working people mounting a credible defence against employer abuse. Referring to the excision from Unite’s rule book, Len McCluskey, the union’s general secretary, said: “These words will go not because we are anarchists, not because we are suddenly planning a bank robbery – but because we have to ask ourselves the question, can we any longer make that commitment to, under any and all circumstances, stick within the law as it stands?” The union has said that it is still committed to ‘operating effectively’ within the law – but it is not clear whether that


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Unions would have to give 14 days’ notice that they intend to use Twitter, Facebook, websites and blogs during strikes


means they will continue to operate effectively while abiding by legislation, or, that its actions will effectively be outside the law (in other words open to legal challenge). Workers’ rights had already been under attack by the coalition. The introduction of employment tribunal fees of up to £1,200 for instance, risks making access to justice the preserve of the wealthy. Alarming Ministry of Justice figures show that the number of sex discrimination cases at tribunals has plummeted by 90 per cent. The Government gave working people a false sense of hope in the Budget by committing itself to the introduction of a statutory “living wage”. But working people will be worse off. Despite the new minimum wage – £7.20 an hour from next April – 13 million families will lose an average £260 a year because of the Budget. While there is no popular clamour for the introduction of these spiteful measures, equally people are not taking to the streets in opposition. Most electors seem to be slumbering over their Conservative-supporting newspapers, while ministers are stripping them of fundamental civil rights. Trade unionists have a number of options: obey the totalitarian legislation and await a government with a sense of justice; take legal action in the international courts over the attack on human rights; openly defy the law and risk imprisonment and penury at the hands of the courts, or covertly encourage members to take unofficial action.


Barrie Clement is a former Labour Editor at The Independent.


The Trade Union Bill 2015


Under the Trade Union Bill 2015 a 50 per cent turnout of union members will be needed for a strike to be lawful. In ‘essential services’ the


strike must also be backed by 40 per cent of those eligible to vote. This 40 per cent


threshold applies to key public services such as health, transport and education. Currently there is no minimum turnout and a strike mandate only requires a simple majority. The law will make industrial action in some large public sector organisations virtually impossible.


Ministers are refusing


to allow unions to use a mixture of electronic voting and independently scrutinised workplace ballots in addition to postal balloting in order to increase turnouts. Under the new package,


union members would have to actively ‘opt in’ to paying the political levy, much of which goes to the Labour party. Currently members have to opt-out. Ostensibly the aim is to democratise the process, but it could lead to the impoverishment of Labour. Ministers intend to


impose a four month time


limit for taking industrial action after a ballot. There will be new


restrictions on picketing which will make it a criminal offence to have seven people on a picket line. Currently the six person limit is part of civil law. A nominated union representative would be held responsible for breaches of the criminal law. The new laws would


force unions to give employers 14 days’ notice of strike action and allow the employers to bring in agency workers to undermine the impact of strikes.


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