THE next Tory government will introduce a threshold on union ballots for strike action. PM Cameron has said: ‘I want a Conservative government to pass new legislation so that strikes in central public services can’t go ahead unless there is a proper threshold crossed in terms of the number of people taking part in the ballot.’ He added that ‘a new Conservative government would deal with that.’
London mayor, Boris Johnson says he had been given personal assurances by the prime minister that he would ‘deliver a deal on day one of a new administration’.
Johnson has said that strikes will be illegal unless 50% of staff in a workplace take part in a ballot. In fact, the working class has fought and defended the right to strike for centuries. Strike decisions, taken before the anti-union laws were brought in, were taken on a show of hands at mass meetings.
There were also strikes of minorities of workers who considered that strike action was necessary and that the majority of members were wrong, and strikes that took place on vital issues even if the executives of unions refused to make them official.
The anti-union laws tried to put an end to this unconditional right to strike. They created a situation where majority ballot results were challenged legally on the basis of minor legal technicalities, giving a judge the right to rule that because these technicalities were breached, in his opinion, such strike actions were declared illegal.
Nevertheless this situation, where taking legal strike action is very difficult, is not good enough for the bosses and right-wing Tory politicians. In the case of the recent 48-hour Tube strike, and the earlier strikes in February, 77% of RMT members voted in the ballot backing action, on a turnout of 40% of the membership.
The bosses’ men, led by the Mayor of London and Cameron, want to see such strike actions made illegal by bringing in legislation requiring a turnout of 50% or over to make a decision on strike action legal.
This is despite the fact that during the recent Tube strikes, it was all too obvious that there were no RMT members who wanted to go to work, and that the majority of the public also supported the action to prevent the mass closure of ticket offices.
Now a number of trade unions are pointing out that, if the Cameron/Johnson principle was adopted in parliamentary elections, the House of Commons would be hundreds of MPs light. GMB leader Paul Kenny said yesterday that ‘if 50% of those eligible to vote, which Boris Johnson is pressing for, becomes the new test of democratic legitimacy, not a single MP including Mr Cameron passes the test.
‘Tim Farron got the highest percentage of those eligible to vote in his Parliamentary Constituency Area in the last general election. He got 46.1% of those eligible to vote.’ Unite has lambasted Cameron, the PM who never won a general election, and London mayor Boris Johnson who was elected on a 38 per cent turnout, as practitioners of repulsive ‘double standards’ for their moves to illegalise strike ballots.
Public and Commercial Services union general secretary Mark Serwotka added that: ‘Government ministers and their supporters were content that police and crime commissioners had been given a mandate to govern on a 15% turnout.’
In fact, policing minister Damian Green even told the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners: ‘You have a powerful mandate. You are the voice of the public on policing and crime.’
Home Secretary Theresa May said in the House of Commons: ‘I make no apology for introducing police and crime commissioners, who have a democratic mandate for the first time.’
So there is to be one law for the election of police commissioners, MPs and other servants of the ruling class, and another law for trade union actions.
The issue is clear. The Tories want to tighten the legal noose on the trade unions to defend the bosses and their system by trying to make legal strike actions impossible. The TUC general council must, at the least, take a decision at this year’s TUC Congress that if the Tories win the next general election and move to carry out this policy, or if Labour is elected and adopts it, the TUC will call an immediate and indefinite general strike to bring down the government and bring in a workers’ government.
