The Trade Union Bill Heralds The End Of Workers Rights In The UK

The Tory Government have now flexed theirt muscles and launched a full blown nuclear atatck upon the Trade Unions and their Union Safety Reps!

No longer under these proposals will USRs be able to lobby MPs and pressure groups and even the likes of the HSE, on the basis that doing so requires a political fund. All in all, these attacks via the new Trade Union Bill announced today, forms the most blatant attack on civil liberties groups, trade unions and working people; since the Nazi attacks by Hitler on German trade unions and on any organisation opposing the Nazi Government!

Cameron is effectively outlawing all forms of dissent in the workplace against employers who diminish their pay and terms and conditions as well as their health and welfare. Further, all dissent from trade unions aimed at lobbying MPs and pressure groups in order to influence government policies, will become nigh on impossible!

Responding to the publication today (Wednesday 15th July) of the Trade Union Bill, the general secretary of the CWU, Dave Ward, said:

"This is not just an attack on trade unions but the rights of all working people in our country, and should be seen in the light of yet another act by the Tories in government since 2010 to undermine those rights."

However it doesn't take a genius to work out, on reading the Bill, that in fact this is just the start to the complete removal of workers rights and their ability to lobby in parliament and to force the employer to negotiate meaningfully on pay and terms and conditions.

This is the new culture of UK industrial life :

* The removal of the right to strike in the public sector,

* No right to vote on industrial action in a collective and democratic manner - only postal ballots being allowed will not change.

* Irreparable damage to the ability of trade unions to improve working conditions in the workplace as employers will know there is no actual chance of industrial action, given them a blank check to ignore all workers opinions/requests for better pay and better terms of employment and working conditions.

* Collective bargaining will be of no use whatsoever as a result of the threat of industrial action being all but outlawed.

* Sick pay will be abolished under plans by Ian Duncan Smith he discussed over the weekend requiring workers to fund their own sick pay.

* The possibility of industrial action will in effect be totally quashed as Trade Unions will be forced to give protracted notice of intent to ballot and in the unlikely event that over 40% of the 50% of workers required to vote, actually do so and vote yes to action; employers will legally be allowed to higher agency workers to replace those on strike.

* Picket lines will be a thing of the past as the government plans to outlaw them altogether eventually, but the current Bill provides to make it illegal for more than 7 people to congregate outside premises where industrial action is taking place.

* Pay and terms and conditions will be severely reduced and the workplace will become the nearest to Dickensian times as it ever has been.

* Trade Union membership will plumit as working people find that they no longer have any power to change employers decisions which are harmful to their pay and welfare.

* Higher and fire at will - as in the USA, will become even more established and eventually become the norm.

* The ability to lobby MPs and organise pressure groups will vanish as the need for Trade Union members to regularly decide as individuals whether or not to pay into a political fund will erode the numbers doing so and thereby drastically curb the ability of Trade Unions to influence political decisions.

CWU's Dave Ward concluded his comments by saying:

"This is a government elected with the support of less than a quarter of the electorate pushing through legislation that goes further than what they said in a manifesto they stood on only a couple of months ago.

The Tories like to proclaim themselves to be the 'party of the workers,' but after a budget in which they cut the pay of those in work, and after we’ve seen the longest fall in living standards since the Victorian era, they’re now trying to undermine the main voice of the workforce in our country.”

The TUC's General Secretary Frances O’Grady said in a press release issued this morning:

“This Bill is an unnecessary attack on workers’ rights and civil liberties that will shift the balance of power in the workplace.

Getting a pay rise or defending terms and conditions will become far harder for working people. Even when ballots meet the government’s new thresholds, employers will soon be able to break strikes by bringing in agency workers.

If ministers were really interested in improving workplace democracy they would commit to online balloting. However, they would rather silence protests against their cuts to children’s centres, libraries and social care services.

These new restrictions on facility time will make it more much difficult for trade unions to solve problems at work before they escalate into disputes.

“Making it a criminal offence for seven people to be on a picket line is a waste of police time and not something you would expect in a country with a proud tradition of liberty.”

Despite this, the government says it is concerned about productivity and wants to find ways of improving it.

Removing the rights of workers to determine their own working lives and influence the employer will do absolutely nothing to improve productivity and will in fact make it worse as workers suddenly realise their employer owns them body and soul!

Such is the new era of bullying tactics being introduced by a Tory government hell bent on removing all dissent from the workplace and in society in general!

Such draconian policies have only been seen inside Europe in the 1930s as a result of the attacks on Trade Unions that Hitler and his Nazi government implemented.

One commentator, writing for the website Politics.co.uk, Adam Bienkov; says it all in the final paragraph of his article about the Trade Unions Bill:

"Yet this wide-ranging bill is just the first step in a far bigger attack on workers' rights.

Once it is passed, it will immediately become far easier for the government and employers to implement even more draconian restrictions on people's basic pay and conditions. Proposals, such as those last week by Ian Duncan Smith to remove workers' rights to sick pay, are just the pointed end of a much longer blade.

Once the trade union movement has been neutered by this bill, the real business of removing our long fought for rights can begin."

You can download and read the full Trade Union Bill here

Source: CWU / TUC / Politics UK

See also: The Americanisation Of The UK's Labour And Social Security Culture Continues