If you are simultaneously bashing the unions and slashing welfare, you're also not in the best position to accuse others of conducting class war.
If you are simultaneously bashing the unions and slashing welfare, you’re not in the best position to accuse others of conducting class war
On the Andrew Marr show this morning David Cameron confirmed that under a majority Conservative government a turnout threshold would be introduced for strike action. The PM said:
“I think in these essential services, like the London Underground, the pain caused to people trying to get to work and trying to help their families by these strikes, which are often supported by a relatively small percentage…I think it’s hugely damaging and so I think the time has come for setting thresholds in strike ballots in essential services. It’s not something I can achieve in a coalition government. It’s something that will be in our manifesto.”
The idea of 50 per cent turnout threshold is something which has previously been championed by London Mayor Boris Johnson. It also fits with the theme of recent Tory attacks on Ed Miliband for being “in the pocket” of the trade unions.
Indeed, for someone who was once believed by many to be a ‘no-content’ Conservative (for a long time it was said that Cameron didn’t believe in anything), proposals to introduce thresholds for industrial action are profoundly ideological. It’s also ironic that, during a week when the Tories have accused Labour of “class war”, they are indulging in pointless union-bashing in order to cheer up their grassroots supporters.
And that’s really what this proposal is about: appeasing right-wing Tories who may be attracted to UKIP.
It’s certainly hard to see any practical reason why Britain urgently needs new strike turnout threshold rules. Far fewer days are lost to industrial action in Britain today than in the past. The number of working days lost to industrial action hit an all-time-low in 2012, with just 250,300 days lost. This compares to an average of 12.9m working days a year lost in the 1970s.
The odds are also already stacked against trade unions, with many ballots invalidated by bureaucratic legal rulings even after a successful ballot. Since 1980 there has been the following blitz of legislation to curb strikes:
- the 1980 Employment Act;
- the 1982 Employment Act;
- the 1984 Trade Union Act;
- the 1988 Employment Act;
- the 1989 Employment Act;
- the 1990 Employment Act;
- the 1993 Employment Act.
As much as the recent tube strikes were an inconvenience to London’s commuters, the biggest issues facing ordinary people in Britain today are stagnant pay and inequality between the ‘squeezed middle’ and the so-called ‘1 per cent’. Wages are still lagging behind inflation for those who don’t receive bonuses, and notwithstanding a very slight narrowing of the gap between the rich and the poor during the downturn, the share of total UK income going to the richest 1 per cent increased from 6 per cent in 1979 to 14 per cent today.
These developments are arguably attributable to the declining power of the trade unions, and for obvious reasons: as union membership has fallen, bosses have had a much stronger hand when it has come to squeezing the pay of their employees and awarding themselves eye-watering sums in remuneration. No, not all employers are like that; but nor are all trade unionists communist troublemakers intent on walking out at the first opportunity. In fact, I’ve never met a trade unionist who actually enjoys going on strike and losing a day or more in pay.
Even Ukippers should welcome more active trade unions if they really care about British workers being undercut by migrants from Eastern Europe. The best way to ensure that migrant workers are paid properly is, after all, to get them unionised so that, alongside their British counterparts, they can push their employer for better pay and working conditions.
Making it more difficult to strike will do nothing to tackle the real issues facing British families, and as with so many policies emanating from Downing Street these days, this is yet another sop to a faction of the Tory party that is increasingly charmed by Ukip. If you are simultaneously bashing the unions and slashing welfare, you’re also not in the best position to accuse others of conducting class war.
James Bloodworth is the editor of Left Foot Forward
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54 Responses to “The Tories want to ban strikes without 50% turnout, yet they accuse others of class war”
treborc1
Coal was dead for a long time, here is my old coal mining hat on, Wilson closed more Mines then Thatcher with the Union on side, but still even labour did not do anything to help the areas which lost coal mining.
Coal fired power stations were on the way out and Nuclear was on the way in, then we had a period with labour in which they build sod all, that’s why we are now paying the price.
We did not build or replace any of the old Nuclear power stations we built one Gas plant in Pembroke at angle but that is already running at reduced production.
But coal mining is now dead and if it ever comes back it will be massive open cast not deep mining.
treborc1
True but which Tories the ones in power or the ones in opposition.
LB
They are part of the debate. All migration should be debated.
1. Which migrants are good for the UK?
2. Which migrants aren’t good for the UK?
3. What effect migration has on the originating country?
4. What level of income is needed before a migrant becomes a net contributor?
5. What to do about migrants who are net consumers of other people’s money?
6. What effect does migration have on housing?
7. What effect does migration have on the poor?
8. What effect does migration have on the rich?
9. Do any of the claimed benefits exist?
10. Should the population have been offered a democratic vote on the issue?
10 starter questions.
PoundInYourPocket
I’m not a proponent of the EU “open-border” policy, that seems to be relinquishing control over your own country and feeds the anti-immigration rhetoric pf parties such as UKIP. However I am also not against immigration and do not see the present levels as a major cause of concern. Hence I am opposed to parties such as UKIP gaining popularity by over-blowing the issue. I think it is fundamentaly wrong and devisive to try and do an itemised “cost-benefit” analysis of the migrant population as you seem to be attempting. We are in my opinion a better country for having a large diverse ethnic population despite the dire warnings of Enoch in the 70’s. And we will continue to benefit by accepting people from different countries. What kind of hell would I now be living in if all the residents of my locality were still pure in-breds. It’s an emotive issue but I see no reason to slam the door shut through fear of the dreaded “immgrant”, better to learn from the past and adapt to a more international world with the door left ajar.
LB
I’m not a proponent of the EU “open-border” policy
=============
I am. However, its not the open borders that are the problem. It’s the net contribution problem. I’m even in favour of open borders world wide, subject to the net contribution test.
There is an in built human trait of not likely being taken advantage of. Equally there is also a regrettable human trait of wanting other people’s goods without reciprocation.
The net contribution goes to the heart of this. Cameron says he’s getting tough on migration. Migrants have to earn150 a week for 3 months before they can claim welfare. I’ll let you do the calculations. http://www.listentotaxman.com/ and plug in 150 a week. For three months they pay no tax and 1.56 in NI. So for less than 2p a day they get access to welfare. The sums involved are horrific.
You can check the sums here http://www.entitledto.co.uk/. Put in a family of 4, in a cheap area of London. Then add on 6K per child for education. 5K for pensions for each adult. 2K for each for education. Then you need the common goods on top. Cameron and Clegg have sold tens of thousands of pounds of welfare for £1.56. That is madness. Those migrants, even if motivated, are taking huge sums of money from others.
How can you justify that, when it hits the poorest hardest?
Next, on your implication of Brits being inbreds. If you had said Indians were inbreds because they married their cousins, you would be accused of racism. Yet you do the same about the Brits. That’s just as racist.
As for the cultural aspect. Do you enjoy chocolate? Probably. Where are the Aztec temples practising human sacrifice? After all your assertion is that to enjoy these benefits you must have migration. Really? We don’t have that for chocolate, and yet we’ve enjoyed chocolate for hundreds of years. The reason is trade. You can benefit from trade, and culture, without having migration. To say you can’t have the benefits of worldwide culture without migration is a false argument.
There needs to be a simple non racist test.
1. You can come so long as you pay more tax than the average government spend.
2. It’s a tax test. At the end of the year, your tax is checked. If its below the average spend, then HMRC raids your bank account to top it up. If that’s not enough, you have to leave.
Very simple and uses the existing systems to manage things. Everyone then knows, migrants are making a positive contribution to the state. They will not be on welfare. So the arguments of the BNP who are fundamentally making that argument, but aren’t clever enough to make it and get beyond racism [eg. All blacks are scroungers or your generalisations that Brits are inbreeds saved my migrants] The BNP loses out. The UK wins.
That would leave one downside. Not to the UK but to the original countries. We’ve looted their human resources.