FBU general secretary Matt Wrack has hit out at the government announcement that it will introduce new anti-union laws which will include the following – minimum service requirements for the fire and rescue services, and all services; to work during strikes; to make it possible for unions to be sued over breaches; for firefighters and other workers to be sacked for refusing to adopt these proposals to become strikebreakers.
Minimum service requirements will severely restrict trade union members’ right to strike, with the aim of making legal strike actions completely ineffective, leading to the trade unions losing the confidence of the working class, as continuing inflation rips up the value of wages pauperising millions. If strikes are ineffective there is no point in being a member of a trade union.
Matt Wrack rightly said: ‘The Tories are clearly hellbent on criminalising and victimising trade unions with this latest threatened onslaught on the right to strike.’
He added: ‘To allow exploitative and vindictive bosses to pursue trade unionists in the courts would be a highly authoritarian move, and more in keeping with the actions of a dictatorial regime.’
Firefighters were among Britain’s Covid heroes. Today, like millions of other workers, they are increasingly struggling to pay the bills as a result of the cost of living crisis caused by the Tories and the crisis of world capitalism.
The government knows that the only way for it to get out of the current economic and political crisis of the UK is by driving down wages and smashing the basic right of workers to take strike action.
They want a return to the hungry 1930s, with the added bonus that without the right to strike the working class will be reduced to powerless individuals.
Wrack says that the ‘FBU and the entire trade union movement will fight this pernicious attack on workers by all means available to us.’
The new leader of the TUC, General Secretary Paul Nowak, said of the proposed laws: ‘This is an attack on the right to strike. It’s an attack on working people. And it’s an attack on one of our longstanding British liberties.
‘It means that when workers democratically vote to strike, they can be forced to work and sacked if they don’t. That’s wrong, unworkable, and almost certainly illegal.’
However, instead of calling a general strike the TUC has issued an appeal to PM Sunak saying that: ‘The Prime Minister said yesterday his door is always open – if he’s serious, he should prove it. He should take up my offer to get around the table to improve this year’s pay and end the current disputes.
‘There is a world of difference between promises of jam tomorrow with technical discussions about pay review bodies, and proper negotiations on pay in the here and now. Our public services are already deep in a staffing crisis. But this government has gone from clapping key workers to threatening them with the sack if they take lawful action for a pay rise. It will only push more people away from essential jobs in public services, harming the whole nation.’
Nowak added: ‘Trade unions will fight this every step of the way. We’re inviting every worker – public and private sector, and everyone who wants to protect British liberties – to be a part of our campaign to defend the right to strike.’
The fact of the matter is that the most the TUC will do is to appeal on its knees to the PM to go lightly on the workers, and not to act in a divisive way, which after all is what the class struggle is all about.
The reality is that British capitalism is in a desperate crisis and the bosses know full well that the only way out of this crisis for them is to smash the trade unions and to drive the trade unions back to the good old days for the bosses, the ‘Hungry 30’s’.
No worker will accept this future. They will overthrow capitalism to stop it from materialising.
It is high time for unions like the FBU, the RMT, ASLEF and the CWU, who are defending hundreds of thousands of jobs, to see the TUC leaders and to tell them that they must call a special meeting of the general council to call a general strike now.
The working class is far stronger than the British ruling class, whose system has clearly had its day and thoroughly deserves to be deposited into the dustbin of history. All ideas of ‘fighting’ the new anti-union laws in the lawcourts must be dumped into the nearest bin.
The trade union leaders must call an emergency meeting of the TUC general council and call an indefinite general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers government and socialism. This is the only way forward! Join the WRP today to lead the struggle for the victory of the British socialist revolution!