ON MONDAY, with the Tory anti-strikes Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill, back in the House of Commons for its final reading before passing into law, the TUC called an emergency protest outside Parliament demanding MPs ‘do the right thing’ and vote it down.
Although initially aimed at workers in health, education, fire, transport, border security and nuclear decommissioning as vital public services, the Tories have refused to define exactly what are ‘essential services’, leaving the power entirely in the hands of the Tory business secretary to impose minimum service levels by giving the bosses and government the legal right to force workers to break strikes or face immediate dismissal.
Speaking on Monday, TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said: ‘Today Conservative MPs must do the right thing and oppose government plans to sack frontline workers for exercising their right to strike.’
In an interview with Sky News later in the morning, Nowak repeated his desperate appeal to Tory MPs with a further call for ‘decency’ from employers.
Nowak said: ‘What will happen the first time a nurse or teacher loses their job because of this legislation? I think there will be a huge outcry about that, not just from the unions and their members but from the public as well.
‘That’s why I would call upon employers actually not to implement the law because to sack somebody for exercising that fundamental right would cut across all decency.’
When asked: ‘Would you condone your members breaking the law?’ Nowak replied: ‘I’m not going to pre-empt what members may or may not do,’ before adding: ‘But I absolutely 100% support people exercising their legal right to take industrial action. As I say, the first worker that is threatened with losing their job because of this legislation, the TUC, all our unions, will challenge it legally, we’ll challenge it industrially and we’ll stand up for every worker.’
Nowak has deliberately avoided the central issue of what the TUC will do if workers are sacked and if all the appeals to Tory MPs and the courts fail to uphold the basic right of workers to strike – a right fought for and won in bitter class struggle throughout the 19th century.
Saying he supports workers taking strike action, will challenge the anti-strike laws industrially, and stand up for every worker is meaningless, while begging the bosses to show ‘decency’ is spineless.
What workers want to know is that the TUC will do the right thing by immediately calling a general strike to defend the right to strike by bringing down the Tories.
Increasingly, Nowak and the TUC are feeling the pressure from the working class to make a stand.
Speaking before yesterday’s vote, Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), said: ‘An inspiring wave of resistance has swept the country in the past year’ as workers battle for wage increases in the face of raging inflation and against a Tory government that ‘wants to drive wages down even further so their big business backers can cash in’.
Wrack repeated the pledge that the FBU is ‘committed to building a mass movement of non-compliance’ if the anti-strike bill becomes law.
Wrack added: ‘We are seeing a workers’ revolt against a hard right government with no mandate for its policies. That revolt will continue whatever happens today.’
The revolt of the working class in defence of their unions and the right to strike has indeed reached a critical point – and it will take more than Nowak pledging to stand with workers or a TUC demonstration to divert the rising tide of revolt.
In their desperate economic crisis, the bosses are determined to make the working class pay by driving them into the gutter of poverty.
The only answer to this class war on workers and their unions is to force an immediate recall of the TUC Congress to call a general strike to kick out the Tories and bring in a workers government that will expropriate the bosses and bankers and bring in a socialist planned economy.
Join the WRP today to lead the struggle for the victory of the British socialist revolution. This is the way forward.
