CAMPAIGN TU Act UNDAU


The government’s controversial Trade Union Act is worse than feared and effectively denies the right of workers to strike, Unite is warning.


As the TU Act comes in Unite is committed to right to strike important public service.


Bobby Morton, Unite’s national officer for passenger transport, is clear what the impact will be in his sector.


Measures in the legislation come into force from March, placing even more barriers in the way of unions when they ballot their members for industrial action – still a relatively rare event despite the recent outbreak of strikes on the railways.


The biggest impact of the Act will be on voter turnout, with a new threshold of 50 per cent for a ballot to be legal.


An additional threshold of 40 per cent support for action will apply to “important public services”, such as health, education, transport, the fire service and border control.


For some unions, neither of these thresholds will be a problem, but with the explosion in the number of people in insecure jobs – to over three million according to the TUC – the threshold will present a huge challenge for unions like Unite.


Acting general secretary Gail Cartmail is clear how big the challenge is, telling uniteWORKS, “Setting such a high barrier for so many workers is anti-democratic and effectively denies them the right to strike.


“I am not sure that everyone understands how high the barrier has been set over which workers will have to jump.”


Workers ranging from midwives and teachers to bus drivers and railway staff will be covered by the additional 40 per cent threshold, although it is not yet entirely clear what constitutes an


“It will apply to anything that has wheels,” he said. “It does not have to be a service run by the public sector.”


Far from pulling back from industrial action, Bobby said he will carry on defending bus and other transport workers from attacks on pay and conditions – backed up by the threat of strikes.


No surrender “Strikes were once described to me as a union’s nuclear deterrent – we never want to use it, but we will not surrender it.”


Surrender is also a word Unite’s national officer for local government, Fiona Farmer, would never use, despite being fully aware of the problems ahead.


She admits the threshold will cause a “major problem”, especially for national ballots, but other measures in the Act will also present difficulties, such as plans to crack down on union facility time.


A number of convenors are already being targeted by spending cuts, so employers could see facility time as a luxury.


The system is being reviewed, but it’s clear the government wants to attack facility time, which Fiona believes will be a false economy. The local government workforce has been cut by a quarter since 2010 so there are probably more meetings being held now to resolve staffing issues. “Without the help of union reps, human


14 uniteWORKS Spring 2017


resources staff will have more work to do, which will be much more expensive for councils,” she said.


Fiona also believes that defining whether all parts of social care comes under an important public service will be a “minefield”, especially as more and more work is outsourced.


Howard Beckett, Unite assistant general secretary for legal services, is already advising Unite reps on how to best manoeuvre their way through the minefield – by drawing up a template so workplaces are “strike ready.”


Howard has been involved in innovative moves to set up legal officers and dispute teams in regions, encouraging them to dream up different strategies for running disputes such as targeted strikes and consider how leverage could help.


He gives an example of how effective a strike by a relatively small group of mechanics would be in a dispute involving bus workers. “We need to organise these key players because our approach has to be more strategic now. We need to think about which employees are central to an organisation.”


Identifying jobs without which companies would come to a halt is central to the strategy, especially as they are difficult to replace with agency workers.


Unite’s success with its £36m strike fund is being used as a reason for setting up workplace strike funds, to hammer home the message that workers striking for others won’t lose out financially by taking industrial action.


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