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”
dnspncr
It’s a bollocks argument anyway. Why stop at 100% of the electorate, why not extend it to 100% of the population of Britain; people aged under 18, sentenced prisoners (like the 21,000 people who were sent to prison for fine defaulting in the last five years) and people who are deemed unable to understand the voting procedure. Trying to imply that our country leans to the right is ridiculous.
stevep
Anyone who is not born into land, wealth and privilege, which is the vast majority of us, has to offer their brains, sweat and toil to “earn” a living. To offer ourselves as wage slaves at the beck and call of our masters.
They may be beneficent and enlightened masters that treat and pay their “workers” fairly. All too often
they don`t, for whatever reason they may give.
The only weapon a worker has, in the face of unreasonable power and injustice, is to be part of a collective and withdraw his/her labour.
Without labour, employers cannot function. They know that. Small wonder then that so much effort is put into lobbying governments to introduce legislation to make withdrawing ones labour as difficult as possible, even illegal.
For Tory governments, such actions are natural, for they are the party of the wealthy and privileged.
The Labour government 1997-2010 could have and should have repealed repressive Tory anti-union legislation and put democratic collective bargaining back on the national agenda. It tinkered about with it instead, giving more emphasis to employers and legalising strikes only if certain hoops were jumped through and T`s were crossed.
My assertion is: That every man or woman, whatever talent and motivation he/she possesses, has a right to a decent living that should not be dependant on his/ her status at birth or dependant on the whims of the wealthy and powerful.
Until we reach such status, Trades Unions and collectivity are the sensible options for the vast majority of us.
stevep
Withdrawing your labour is an inherently risky business, private sector or public.
You go on strike, you don`t get paid, No pay, no mortgage or utility bill payment.
Plenty of strikers have gone under over the years, it`s not done for fun – only as a last resort to try to protect yourself from unreasonable demands from employers that could see you going under anyway. Hobson`s choice!
Very few companies have sunk due to industrial action. They sink mainly because of poor management, under investment, shareholder and director`s greed. Good companies (very often successful ones), maintain a dialogue with their employees and their representatives and benefit from it.
Private and public sector employees alike used to enjoy decent pay, pensions etc. until manufacturing was wilfully destroyed in the 1980`s on the twin alters of ideology and greed, taking unions down with them. The sectors were then rebuilt as service sectors with poor pay, poor employee rights, reduced pensions etc. as the norm.
So don`t blame the unions for trying to maintain existing public sector pay and conditions, the private sector could be still be enjoying them too if corporate greed hadn`t won the day.
gunnerbear
Most strikers in the public sector take the odd day off without pay. They are at no risk of being unemployed e.g the school or hospital isn’t going to close is it and make them all redundant. Frankly, given the awesome pay and pensions advantages that public sector workers enjoy on average over private sector workers, I’d abolish the right to strike in any public sector job and bring in IPRBs for the NHS, teachers etc. Why should I pay for unproductive lazy (insert very naughty c-word) like some in the NHS and teaching to be able to enjoy pension and featherbedding that because I’m a productive taxpayer, I have to pay for (as well as my own provision). Look at Grangemouth – if that had been in the public sector the workers could’ve stayed out for ever, at no risk of job losses…..in reality the employers said, “We’re already losing money….push this too far and we’re all f**ked…..”. Lo and behold the workers came back. I’ve recently been involved in industrial action with my employer but was acutely aware – the company is losing millions at the moment – that if we pushed it too far we’d all be f**ked….and yes you’ve guessed it, that was over pensions. So even as a TU man, I want the soakers and the non-jobbers in the public sector to have to fight hard to strike – after all the private sector pay for it. Still, that’s probably too small c-conservative for some in the current iteration of the Left to grasp as they fight for vested interests, the immigrants and the claimant classes that the rest of us have to pay for. As to what happened 30 odd years ago – that was then, I’m working in todays world. As to corporate greed – the company I works for competes in a global world fighting for custom from global suppliers for whom price of material is the key determinant – again not quite the same as the nurses in the NHS who let people die needlessly at Mid Staffs or the teachers that routinely turn out school leavers who can’t read or write. How about that for an incentive scheme – too many deaths at hospital we sack 10% of managers, doctors and other medical personnel at random. Maybe do the same for schools – any school turning out above X% of children that can’t read or write – sack the headmaster and 10% of the staff at random. There you go – a direct link between outcomes and responsibility – just like for those of us who work in the private sector. As the UK financial regulators I’d jailed every one of them for malfeasance in a public office and jailed the chairs and CEOs of all the banks that took public cash as part of the bailout – one year for each million that they needed to keep going….. …as for the man who smashed the UK economy into the ground, one Gordon Brown, for him, I reserve the worst possible punishment – he’d be forced to live next door to George Osborne for ever.
gunnerbear
Labour? The native working men and women in this country would have been way better off if the Labour Party – yes the Labour Party – had not thrown open the doors of the UK to the flotsam, jetsam, unemployed and unemployable of the entire world.