“She’s seeking to make effective industrial action illegal, so people will have to use other means to take action and respond to the employers."
RMT boss Mick Lynch has taken apart Liz Truss over her plans to effectively ban meaningful industrial action as rail strikes continued today.
Truss who is the favourite to replace Boris Johnson, has said that she would introduce minimum service levels on critical national infrastructure in the first 30 days of government under her leadership. As a result, teachers, postal workers and those working in the energy sector could be prevented from going on strike.
The Tory leadership hopeful has also proposed raising the minimum threshold for voting in favour of strike action from 40 to 50 percent. Other measures include raising the minimum notice period for strike action from two weeks to four weeks and implementing a cooling-off period so that unions can no longer strike as many times as they like in the six-month period after a ballot.
Speaking to the BBC Lynch said he thought Truss was a ‘right-wing fundamentalist’, warning that the country would have one of the most extreme leaders should she win the race to replace Johnson.
Lynch said: “This is a direct attack on one of the main pillars of our democracy one of the founding basis of any democracy is the right for a trade union to freely organise and take appropriate industrial action.
“She’s seeking to make effective industrial action illegal, so people will have to use other means to take action and respond to the employers.
“Whose been held to ransom at the moment is the British worker right across the economy.”
He said Truss wants the unions to “surrender” so we have a “low-paid, cowed workforce” in the UK.
“The rest of the country, if you believe in democracy and believe in a liberal economy, cannot support what she’s standing for, because it’s oppression of working people.”
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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