The European Court of Human Rights may have a mandate to intervene against the Conservatives’ anti-strike proposals
The Tories’ Trade Union Bill is an extraordinary attack on the human rights of working people. Only Labour can stop it, but some in the party will fear a confrontation over workers’ rights. It’s vital we don’t let that fear get the better of us.
The Trade Union Bill will make strikes for public sector workers impossible unless 40 per cent of workers eligible to vote favour industrial action and the voter turnout reaches 50 per cent.
In addition, in the unlikely event of a strike, the plans would make it easier for employers to hire agency staff, making industrial action ineffective and making collective rights redundant.
It’s ironic that a Tory government that won only 37 per cent of the vote wishes to implement such a law.
If democracy in the United Kingdom was held to the same standards, no government would be elected. The Conservatives won the most recent election with 37 per cent of the vote and in 2010 won 36.1 per cent and managed to form government.
Yet the same percentages would not provide a mandate for public sector strikes. This intrinsically flaws the proposal.
As well as its hypocrisy, the proposed law will severely undermine human rights, specifically freedom of association. By limiting public sector strikes, the government will be preventing the universal right to freedom of association, a right closely linked to freedom of expression.
This will compromise the right of a group to take collective action to pursue the interests of its members.
The state is obligated to protect the right to strike and collective bargaining in order to allow for the protection of workers. The right to strike and collective bargaining maintain safe working conditions, fair wages and healthy working hours. These are things that benefit us all.
Labour should always be a broad church, but we should also continue in our tradition of fighting to preserve the protection of workers when they are at their most vulnerable.
Workers’ rights are human rights and this is just another proposal for legislation that is consistent with the Conservative’s anti-human rights agenda. In fact, it is very much linked to the Tories’ attack on the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the Human Rights Act.
The ECHR protects the rights of workers under freedom of association. In a case a few years ago involving the Turkish government’s ban on public sector strikes, the European Court of Human Rights used the ECHR to declare the law incompatible with Turkey’s human rights obligations.
The European Court of Human Rights may therefore have a mandate to intervene against the Conservatives’ anti-strike proposals. Aware of this, the Conservatives have developed what looks like a deliberate and calculated plan to assault workers’ rights and undermine the ECHR at the same time.
The Labour Party must not be afraid to challenge the Tories’ or appear to be seen too left-wing on the issue of human rights. Regardless of the election defeat or a future policy supporting aspiration, Labour must maintain its position to protect the fundamental human rights of workers in the United Kingdom.
Steven Male is a Campaigns Volunteer with the Labour Campaign for Human Rights
75 Responses to “Trade Union Bill: another calculated attack on workers’ rights”
stevep
An animated reply, but you seem to miss my point entirely, which is that the decline in pay, pensions etc. was entirely managed by right-wing zealots and global corporations who created the ultra-competitive world you are talking about, which impacted on the world we all live and work in today. Free market Capitalism is a failed ideology which has led to more power and wealth being vested in the hands of fewer people and widespread poverty worldwide.
It was this ideology that led to the collapse of the banks and near-economic ruin, not poor old Gordon Brown, who seems to have been lumbered with the blame for it by the disingenuous right.
A leper in this country, hero the world over for advising countries on how to get out of the mess ( USA included). History will show a truer, less biased picture.
As for George Osborne, he`ll soon have to resort to tying a pork chop around his neck to get the dog to play with him.
gunnerbear
“Free market Capitalism is a failed ideology which has led to more power and wealth being vested in the hands of fewer people and widespread poverty worldwide.” And Labour cheered it on.
gunnerbear
“It was this ideology that led to the collapse of the banks and near-economic ruin, not poor old Gordon Brown….” Gordon was one of the chief architects of the system that came crashing down….something we’re still paying for today…..
stevep
No, The Thatcher Government were the chief architects of the system that came crashing down. It was they that rejected social democracy and the post-war consensus, then forced an untested economic doctrine, monetarism, on the British people. It was they that deregulated the city and the banking system.
It didn`t work, caused economic and social chaos (high unemployment,Black Wednesday, the poll tax, the miners strike, anyone?) benefited a relative handful of already-wealthy bosses and city spivs whilst making the rest of us worse off.
The incoming Labour government of 1997 inherited this economic mess from a disinterested, infighting Major-led Tory government.
If Gordon Brown made one big mistake, it was trusting the city and the banks at their word to regulate themselves. He admits that. The whole world now knows the big financial institutions cannot be trusted at their word.
But still it goes on after five years of a Tory-led government. Lax or no regulation, colossal Bankers and city bonuses and the same free-market doctrine and fiscal policy that led to two recessions and very nearly a third in five years. The economy was growing in 2010 when Labour left office, What happened?
The tired old talk of the right, seeking to justify failed economic doctrines, never ceases to amaze me. Poverty caused by such regimes is disguised by platitudes like “lacking in Initiative”, “failure to help themselves” or “there`s plenty of work for those who want to look for it”. The hypocritical stench of pious Victoriana is everywhere. Decency and compassion, nowhere.
It is the intention of websites like Left Foot Forward to reclaim the real narrative and to expose the false. Not before time.
stevep
yes, you`re right.