10th January 2023
The politics of striking provides one of the most enduring dividing lines in British politics.
On one side, there is support for, and solidarity with, unionised workers exercising their right to withdraw labour.
On the other side there is disdain for those same workers, especially if the workers are in the public sector or are otherwise providing public services, especially when it appears that the inconvenience of the wider public is being used as leverage in the dispute.
Some think the striking workers are entirely in the right, and some think they are entirely in the wrong.
And often there seems to be few in the middle (like me) who think both employers and unions are capable of getting things wrong and even of abusing their respective powers.
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But regardless of your view on the ultimate rights and wrongs of strikes by public sector and other public service workers, there is something fundamentally objectionable in the current government’s proposals to compel certain “key” workers to attend work when they otherwise would be entitled to strike.
And this is especially objectionable when this is being done as a “sticking plaster” so as to distract from the government’s failure to properly engage in respect of the current disputes.
There is, of course, a case for certain public sector workers – the armed forces and the civil police force – not to be able to strike.
But such workers foregoing their right to strike should have alternative entitlements and arrangements to balance this loss of a right.
Simply prohibiting other key workers from being able to strike, without sufficient alternative entitlements and arrangements to balance this loss of a right, is misconceived and illiberal.
It is an authoritarian gesture, rather than a solution to a problem.
To object to such a prohibition is not necessarily to side with the striking trade unions, but it is to say that removing the right to strike is generally wrong in principle and should never be done lightly.
The current government should be looking elsewhere for solutions to the current problems with industrial unions.
The proposals should be dropped and ministers should be thinking of other ways to address our present winter of discontent.
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100% in agreement. One can’t force people to work.. that’s slavery.
And that’s the point. The Human Rights Act 1998 Schedule 1 Article 4 prohibits forced or compulsory labour except in limited circumstances.
So will the HRA be cited as an obstacle? Will that lead to calls for its abolition?
France, Spain, Italy and Germany have minimum service laws so I imagine that Human Rights issues would have been litigated in the ECHR.
As an Engineering undergraduate in the 80s, read Pelling’s “A History of British Trade Unionism”. Picked it up 2nd hand on Amazon (appreciate the irony) last summer and read again. … there’s a long, long history of Government using its powers to prevent collective action
As a primer and mid-Century PoV would strongly recommend
Working in poor conditions for inadequate pay is bad enough, but being compelled to work is worse. If this law passes, I would not be surprised to see some people in these affected sectors walking away and finding other jobs.
But I understand that several other jurisdictions in Europe already require workers in certain key sectors to reach prior agreement on minimum service levels before they strike. I would be interested to hear how this works in practice. Are these constraints balanced by other additional worker rights? Do workers find their ability to strike is unduly limited?
The history of trade unions and strikes in the UK is interesting and parallels widening of the franchise, with key developments in 1906 (alongside the rise of the Labour party) and 1875 and 1871 (in the immediate aftermath of the Second Reform Act).
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_Disputes_Act_1906
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy,_and_Protection_of_Property_Act_1875
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_Union_Act_1871
It was not that long ago that union organisers and members faced criminal lawsuits for conspiracy, and claims from employers for inducing breaches of contract.
One wonders whether Rishi Sunak or any of the other party leaders, for that matter, are familiar with the concept of no strike agreements in exchange for binding arbitration?
“Exactly why Margaret Thatcher chose to confront the unions over GCHQ in January 1984, rather than in 1981, remains a mystery. Brian Tovey had discussed the union matter at length with his board of directors in 1980, and had drawn up a secret plan for de-unionisation, code-named ‘Status’. He formally asked the government for a union ban following the CSU’s 9 March 1981 day of action, but as in the 1950s and 1960s, government Ministers recoiled in horror. The main opponent was the Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington, who objected on principle, viewing trade union membership as a basic human right. Even within the Permanent Secretaries’ Committee on the Intelligence Services (PSIS), Sir Douglas Vass at the Treasury and Frank Cooper at the Ministry of Defence argued that it would cause too much trouble. Francis Pym, Carrington’s successor as Foreign Secretary in 1982, would also have nothing to do with the idea of a union ban at GCHQ.”
“In December 1983 a secret Cabinet subcommittee was created to implement a GCHQ trade union ban. The members of this committee were Margaret Thatcher, the Defence Secretary Michael Heseltine, the Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe, the Employment Secretary Tom King and Deputy Prime Minister Willie Whitelaw. Howe recalled that this committee gave ‘a good deal of thought, or so we believed, to sugaring the pill’, and finally decided to offer GCHQ employees financial compensation for the loss of their union rights. In gloomy tones he noted that somehow ‘it fell to me’ to present this to the House of Commons in a ‘surprise’ statement on 25 January 1984. In fact the whole thing was prepared with such obsessive secrecy that Howe now recalls it with ‘astonishment’. Only two other major figures were told in advance. TUC General Secretary Len Murray and Shadow Foreign Secretary Denis Healey, both Privy Councillors, were called to Howe’s office in the Commons to be informed a few hours before the announcement. Healey, one of the most intelligent people ever to hold ministerial office, immediately recognised the scale of the impending blunder, and was ‘beside himself’ with delight at the political hay he would be able to make. ‘From the moment when I made my statement to the House,’ recalls Howe, ‘a huge storm of denunciation broke about my head.’ ”
“The union representatives were in shock. They urged members not to sign away their rights, and then convened at Cheltenham’s Pittville Pump Room late in the afternoon to decide what to do. The strategy the unions chose to pursue was fairly reactive. Although they had the overwhelming support of most MPs, including many Conservatives, and the press, they had been stunned by the surprise announcement. Most believed that the government would accept a compromise. On 1 February Len Murray led a fourteen-strong TUC delegation to Downing Street, where they met Margaret Thatcher, Geoffrey Howe, Tom King, Willie Whitelaw and Robert Armstrong. The unions accepted that the anxiety about disruption to intelligence was not absurd, but took issue with the way the issue had been handled. They offered a ‘no disruption agreement’. King, Whitelaw and Howe also urged a compromise, Howe suggesting that staff could remain union members if they agreed not to engage in strike activity.
The fly in the ointment was Bernard Ingham, Margaret Thatcher’s Press Secretary. Howe captures Ingham’s role perfectly when he says that his strength lay in ‘his ability to articulate the Prime Minister’s prejudices more crisply even than she could herself’. Ingham told Thatcher that the press would see a compromise as a sign of weakness – in effect a ‘U-turn’. Lord Gowrie, Minister for the Civil Service, and Thatcher’s Principal Private Secretary, Sir Robin Butler, were also against compromise. Accordingly, on 28 February there was a second meeting, and the compromise was rejected. The unions then played into Thatcher’s hands by calling a one-day strike. The TUC had given a lot of ground, and Robert Armstrong, the Cabinet Secretary, had expected the compromise to be accepted. Indeed, he had signalled as much to the unions, and was now embarrassed. The Foreign Office later argued that the deal offered did not provide ‘sufficient guarantees’. In truth, it was rejected on a prime ministerial whim.”
GCHQ, Richard Aldrich.
That is interesting – thank you.
When I first read of this proposal, I thought it should logically also involve duties on public authorities to provide suitable levels of public service in the first place. There is no effective obligation on anyone – local authorities or transport operators – to provide a minimum level of bus services, say, but apparently they are so vital that if they are provided extreme measures are needed to protect them from industrial action.
Agreed. The proposed legislation is a diversion from the real issue, that public services are underfunded and have been for a long time. It will not solve the problem. Only the government can do this.
In general employers, including governments, get the union behaviour that they deserve. This government, as ever, is confusing bullying and obfuscation with governing. The unions, generally, have been following the laws introduced by the Thatcher government and polling members before instituting withdrawal of labour. This looked like a high hurdle then but seems to be jumped readily today – sign that the memberships have really had enough of being abused and devalued.
So full opposition to these drastic proposals, which counterproductive and are the inverse of good industrial relations, should be available from all quarters.
First they came for the workers …
Since one common complaint is that their workplaces have been systematically under-resourced and depend upon voluntary overtime, what exactly does the government propose: compulsory voluntary overtime?
What the government don’t seem to appreciate is that by removing the right to strike they are making those industries less attractive to new employees – often in sectors like healthcare that are already struggling to recruit and consequently are being overwhelmed.
We clearly need more key workers in most professions, not fewer. Removing the right to strike (and therefore to leverage employee rights) is going to make recruitment harder, not easier.
They either don’t appreciate or don’t care…
This is going to backfire greatly on this myopic government and rightly so. They have nil negotiating skills ( as was shown in BREXIT) other than digging themselves into a very large black hole.
Agreed.
In the examples, you give the police and armed forces agree in advance of joining not to strike as part of their contractual terms. In my view, withdrawal of labour is such a fundamental right it can never be applied retrospectively across a whole group of people.
In 2016 people were promised increased rights in an expanding, low migrant, high income economy.
Higher wages have not been delivered, the economy is not expanding, and now people are being told that their right to strike for better pay and conditions is to be reduced.
This is all quite amazing.
“It is an authoritarian gesture”
It looks like a political blunder of a gesture. Should it be made a law, what sanction might one incur for breaking it?
People are striking because there is a staff shortage due to poor pay and conditions. Firing them is the sanction that backfires most comically of the dismal options I can imagine.
Which genius came up with this one?
The current constraints on taking industrial action are already very restrictive, requiring large proportions of the union members being polled to vote and then a large proportion of those votes to support action. In the interest of fairness perhaps the Tory party should consider similar thresholds be imposed on them before inflicting a new prime minister on the nation.
You, sir, would know better than I the statutory provisions that protect workers against liability for breach of contract and unions against the tort of procuring or inducing such a breach.
Whether workers or unions should be liable for predictable or intended damage to third parties might be interested if there were no protection
The right to strike may be natural and inalienable but protection against the consequences might be thought of as conferred.
Dear David:
A key initial issue is whether or not there has been good faith bargaining by labour or management. Once that need is satisfied, is there any consideration being given by either side to the device of “compulsory arbitration” used in several other countries to address this very problem? That has often resulted in a contract being imposed with terms that neither side likes. Try harder next time!
“There is, of course, a case for certain public sector workers – the armed forces and the civil police force – not to be able to strike”.
Why?
I think what you may mean is ‘not to be ALLOWED to strike’ – as in forbidden by the terms of their employment contract, or forbidden by Parliamentary statute, i.e. the law.
In such cases, the worker knows in advance the terms he/she is expected to accept, and presumably recognises that a penalty may be imposed if they contravene those terms – for instance, loss of earnings, dismissal, or even imprisonment.
However, denial of the ‘ability’ to strike is denial of a basic liberty which, in terms of any worker, means nothing less than serfdom.
It’s all a return to the bad old days of industrial relations in the 70s and 80s, when as a civil servant I was at the centre of events, both at ACAS and at GCHQ.
Without knowing all the details of what is proposed it is almost certainly in breach of international law as set down in ILO Conventions. It may also open up public service employers to claims of constructive unfair dismissal, as it represents a unilateral change in terms and conditions of employment.
Unions may respond with widespread action short of a strike, which would be even more difficult for employers to deal with than all out strikes.
A recipe for chaos, then, as well as bad employment practice.
The potential solutions are genuinely independent pay review bodies and arbitration in which both sides are committed to accept the results, neither of which the Treasury is likely to accept.
The alternative is to treat employees as people to be valued, and to accept a proper mutuality of obligations.
‘The alternative is to treat employees as people to be valued, and to accept a proper mutuality of obligations.’
Not much chance of that from a governing party many of whose members are wedded to the poisonous lunacies of Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek and the rest of the brotherhood of emotionally cretinised wealth-worshippers.
Never forget that when he first came to power and before he got started on Jews and Gypsys Hitler rounded up the trade unionists
Doubtless the rabble of humanoid plague bacilli that we have for a government will include as those providing ‘essential public services’ the catering staff at the Houses of Parliament, the drivers of ministerial cars, the employees of Michelin-starred restaurants in London and the people who have to clear away the evidence of nose-candy indulgence at grace-and-favour country retreats.
Next up:
The return of the Combination Acts and the Master and Servant Act and the law that forced seamen to sail on ships they’d signed on to ‘sight unseen’. Often when they acually saw the vessel they knew at once that it was what became known as a ‘coffin ship’. If they refusesd to serve on it they could be jailed.
We have a government that denies it is the employer and refuses to take responsibility in the case of rail. And in the case of the NHS, it has an organisation that *already* fails to meet minimum standards of service even without industrial action. Perhaps government should be banned from bringing about that state of affairs?
It is the Government’s initial refusal to talk at all to the unions and now their faux talking in response to public and media outcry that depresses me. No-one ever resolved anything satisfactorily without first talking, satisfactorily, with one another. My MP replied to my complaints about this by saying the Government was “aware” of hardship and making clear “decisions” aka not “talking” at all.
In a public-sector body where under-staffing means that services on a non-strike day are at or below the level which could be said to be acceptable, an employer’s instruction to maintain a certain minimum standard could effectively amount to a demand for everyone to come in to work, including some people who happen to be ill. At some point, our old friends from Wednesbury might get involved in a court action brought by a union claiming that the employer’s demand was not reasonable.
Another such situation might arise if the union were engaged in a work to rule, which wouldn’t be covered by this law, and the employer wanted to maintain a minimum standard of cover which cannot be provided if 100% of staff are in work but only doing what they are actually paid to do. What then?
Industrial action is a failure of leadership.
Legislation restricting people’s rights to take action fails to address the leadership failures. Indeed it puts across the message that the government prefers leaders to fail by attempted domination rather than collaborate with their people.
Add in the bonuses handed out to failed leaders and you have the clear priorities of the medieval feudalists in power.
The logical follow-up would be a mass resignation. If we have no prospects in the public sector, and our options are to take it or leave it, then instead of getting the army to fill in for border control on the odd day they can deal with replacing everyone in a few weeks.
“People are saying that the trade unions are ruining the Christmas holidays¹” said Pooh.
“The reason people have Christmas holidays is because of the trade unions” said Piglet.
“Thanks for noticing me” said Eeyore
Excellent!
Suggested elsewhere that if some definable and credible minimum level of service were required then Jack and Jill public would be better served on strike days than on normal days. Hardly a ringing endorsement of government capability.
HMG is in a richly deserved hole. Employment is fairly full, more workers are needed in almost every sector. In ‘normal’ circumstances we could recruit them from the EU and elsewhere. But K&Truss messed up an already messed up economy. The noose is tightening around the government’s neck, sit back and enjoy the show.