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
Plenty of bricks and worse have been thrown at workers taking industrial action to defend themselves against the forces of capital. Potential strikers could have stood to lose their livelihoods and worse, in situations like that they needed to know if they were all going to stand side by side together, hence the show of hands.
The secret ballot, whilst perceived to be “fair”, is just another tool employers use to divide and rule.
Capitalists hate anything that has the potential to alter the distribution of wealth. That is why they do whatever they can and employ the many and various weapons at their disposal to disrupt and destroy collectivity, for it is their main threat and the only means the poor man has to stand up for himself.
gunnerbear
stevep, Honestly, please you’re trying to defend the indefensible. Secret ballots are a good thing.
RebeccaFHardy
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Dave Stewart
Gordon Brown architect of neolibralism, I think not.
It all started off in the late 60s and early 70s with a handful of theorists based in Chicago. Nothing to do with Brown at all expect that he continued on with it.
gunnerbear
The ‘Gordo’ was either CotE or PM from ’97 – ’10. He built the ruinous system of tax credits, he let homes on benefits get more than the average wage, he wrecked occ. pensions and created the laxest regulations ever and let the City get away with what the City wanted. He was also there when the Climate Change Act was brought in along with a carbon tax – that has now killed Hatfield pit and put hundreds of people out of work and threated thousands of jobs in the local economy. Brown was there when the UK threw open the gates to all and sundry, smashing conditions for those at the bottom of the pile. Brown was also the man that didn’t dare let the UK public vote on the Lisbon Treaty, instead signing it, in private like a political pervert, ashamed of what he was doing. It was of course senior figures in the Labour Party that said the public shouldn’t get a vote on the EU as the public couldn’t be trusted. Meanwhile, Brown was letting Burnham attempt to cover up Mid-Staffs whilst also wrecking Hitchingbrooke in a failed privatisation plan. I’d say Brown was a tool and a failure……just as like Ed….and the public punished the Party for it. And that’s not even mentioning foreign affairs. And spare me the diatribe about being a Tory Troll – I’m non-aligned.