THE Tory ‘Strikes (Minimum Services Levels) Bill’, unveiled by business secretary Grant Shapps this week has been criticised by sections of the bourgeois press for its lack of any detail and the sweeping powers it gives to Tory ministers over trade unions and strikes.
The basic thrust of the bill is that employers will be legally allowed to set ‘minimum’ service levels and issue ‘work notices’ to workers instructing them to attend for work during a legally called strike.
All the legal immunities against unfair dismissal are shredded. This bill adds to the legislation put forward last year to make unions responsible for ‘illegal’ strike action and liable to fines of up to a million pounds by the courts.
An opinion piece in The Guardian newspaper pointed out yesterday: ‘The bill is drafted in imprecise and sweeping terms. These would effectively allow ministers to rule industrial relations by decree, and not only in what are currently regarded as essential services.’
The article continued: ‘There is very little detail in the bill about the criteria that ministers would have to apply. This is a potential minefield. It risks creating many more problems than it purports to solve.’
This is a dangerous underestimation of what is driving the Tories to bring in this bill.
It has nothing to do with, as The Guardian appears to believe, the Sunak government posturing to win over the extreme right-wing of the party or to sway public opinion, which overwhelmingly supports strikers.
It has everything to do with the absolute imperative of bankrupt British capitalism to smash the working class and its organisations in order to impose savage super-austerity on workers and their families.
With inflation out of control and the UK already diving into recession, the ruling class are desperate to break the unions and the working class.
The vagueness of the bill is deliberate. It opens the way for Tory ministers to extend by decree the right of every boss throughout the public and private sector to force workers to break strikes and return to work during a legally called industrial action.
Any union that refuses to go along with this, for instance, by calling out its members in defence of any sacked worker, will be hauled before the courts and face massive fines – fines designed to bankrupt it.
Under this bill trade unions will be held responsible for imposing the dictatorship of the bosses on the working class.
An all-out war is on to end trade unions as free and independent organisations representing the interests of workers, turning them into ‘Labour Fronts’ run by the bosses, whose only role is to police the working class, making sure it submits to every demand of the employers.
In Germany in the 1930s, smashing independent trade unions and replacing them with Labour Fronts acting as an arm of the Nazi Party, was achieved through a counter-revolutionary defeat of the German working class and the victory of fascism.
Now a weak crumbling Tory government is attempting to achieve the same result through legislation, while the working class far from being defeated is rising up, refusing to have its lives destroyed and being exploited mercilessly for the profit of the bosses and bankers.
The anger and determination of workers not to see their unions and rights destroyed has forced the TUC to announce that it will hold a national ‘protect the right to strike’ day on Wednesday 1 February.
The TUC has insisted that it is not calling strike action, just a protest over the bill.
On the same day, the public service union, PCS, has called for a one-day national all-members strike over pay, pensions and job security to coincide with the TUC call.
Workers must demand that every union calls nationwide strikes on February 1 and force the TUC to call an indefinite general strike from that day.
Make February 1st the start of a general strike to kick out the Tories and bring in a workers government that will expropriate the bankers and bosses and advance to a nationalised and planned socialist economy.