The Conservatives have announced their intention to introduce legislation which would further limit the right to strike amongst large sections of the public sector, should they win the upcoming election. Such proposals constitute yet another attack on the right of workers to organise and defend themselves against the austerity that capitalism demands.
The Conservatives have announced their intention to introduce legislation which would further limit the right to strike amongst large sections of the public sector, should they win the upcoming election. Such proposals constitute yet another attack on the right of workers to organise and defend themselves against the austerity that capitalism demands.
The Tories wish to ban public sector strikes unless they have received support from 40% of their total union membership, regardless of the ballot results supporting strike action. A higher threshold of 50% turnout would apply to key public services such as the NHS, the education sector, transport and fire services. The Conservatives have also outlined proposals to allow agency staff to be brought in to cover for striking workers, further limiting strike effectiveness.
We should point out that the hypocrisy of the ruling class. The Tories only received 36% of the vote at the last election, and of only 23.5% of the electorate as a whole. These ladies and gentlemen have a contempt for even their own parliamentary democracy, which as we will see at the next election, is fast becoming a hindrance for them. Who are they to lecture workers on the outcome of their strike ballots?
TUC general secretary, Frances O’Grady, has expressed her indignation at such proposals, commenting that such action would “effectively end the right to strike in the public sector.” Jon Skewes, the Royal College of Midwives’ director of employment relations and development, condemned these measures further, stating that, “It will put an enormous amount of power over workers back into the hands of employers and will leave those workers without any redress against abuses of that power.”
The bourgeoisie have been consistently and systematically attacking workers’ democratic freedoms for decades. These recent proposals demonstrate the ruling class’s fervent disdain for, and fear of, the working class. Not only have the masses had to deal with deep public sector cuts and rocketing unemployment, they have also seen further attacks on their democratic right to take industrial action.
This attack on workers’ rights was both instigated and perpetuated by the Thatcherite regime and continued under Blair, with legislation being implemented throughout the 1980s and beyond making it increasingly difficult for workers to express their collective grievances. The abolition of the “closed shop”; the move to postal ballots; and the banning of sympathy strikes: all of these anti-union laws – and more – were brought in by the Tories in the past and maintained under New Labour.
It is no coincidence that the Tories have chosen to take the initiative to propose this new legislation now. Due to the coalition government’s failure to achieve any qualitative economic growth in the wake of the global economic recession, and the rightward tack of bourgeois politicians (some of whom have switched their allegiances to UKIP, who have voiced their intention to essentially eradicate workers’ rights), the ruling classes are beginning to lose confidence in the Tories as a stable political force.
This is another reason to kick the Conservative party out at the coming general election. Austerity in the next parliament is a recipe for class struggle. They are preparing in advance of future industrial action as favourable conditions as possible for the bosses. Like the rabid anti-worker agenda of UKIP, the Tories are prepared to do everything to maintain the support they receive from big business in this country, whose interests they have always served. The labour movement must boot these representatives of capitalism out and fight for a socialist political alternative.
