TUC must act: Build mass action against anti-strike laws

The Tories have already passed into law their latest tranche of anti-union legislation, the brutal Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act, earlier this year. It has the power to open unions up to heavy financial damages if they don’t comply with the law, as well as exposing striking workers to the clear risk of dismissal. 

Now they have announced plans to extend the laws to ambulance staff, rail workers and Border Force employees. In response the TUC have called a special congress in December – the first time this has been done in 40 years. 

The motions that were passed by September’s TUC Congress, including from the FBU, set out much of the fighting strategy that is needed. 

This included “to organise a Special TUC Congress…to explore options for non-compliance and resistance” and “support demonstrations and hold a national march opposing the legislation and calling for repeal of the anti-union laws.” The FBU called for this to include industrial action and “100% solidarity with any trade unions attacked under these MSL laws”. 

In addition, Unite passed a resolution at its July policy conference, moved by a Socialist Party member, calling for action on the scale of a 24-hour general strike against the MSL Act. 

It is vital that these strategies are now put into practice by the special congress if and when the legislation is attempted to be used.

Union reps and members, including the hundreds of thousands who have been taking action in the growing strike wave, are looking for a fighting strategy to defeat this new Tory attack on the right to strike and inflict a decisive defeat on Sunak’s government. 

The MSL Act comes in a now very long line of Tory attacks on the right to strike – going back four decades to Thatcher’s anti-union laws. But it would be a serious miscalculation of Sunak to imagine that he is acting from a position of power. In fact, the various attempts by the House of Lords to effectively neuter the bill, including by Tory peers, reflects the deep nervousness of more farsighted representatives of the capitalist establishment. 

They are wary of provoking mass resistance, glimpsed in the tide of recent struggle. The crises in the Tories, leading to three prime ministers in 2022, has been underpinned by the unrelenting cost-of-living squeeze that has been the main driver for the biggest, broadest and most persistent strike wave for a generation. In August 2020, in the Covid lockdown, the more-realistic RPI inflation was 0.5%. Just over two years later, it was over 14%. It is still not far off double figures now, with food inflation higher. 

The 2016 Act 

Shamefully, Cameron’s vicious 2016 Trade Union Act passed into law virtually unchallenged by the trade union leaderships. Not one national Saturday demonstration was called, let alone any industrial action. Yet this was only five years after the TUC’s 750,000-strong 26 March 2011 anti-austerity demonstration that led directly to the 30 November pensions strike of 29 unions, effectively a public sector general strike, against the same Cameron’s attack on public sector workers’ retirement rights and benefits. 

The 2016 Trade Union Act stipulated that industrial action ballots would only be legal if the turnout was at least 50%. The Tories believed that the new law would make it virtually impossible for unions to win national ballots, especially in the public sector, where hundreds of thousands of workers are grouped together in national agreements on pay, terms and conditions. 

The strike wave has dealt a fatal blow to that idea, with a whole range of strike ballots smashing through the threshold. On Budget Day this March, an estimated 600,000 workers struck together. 

But Cameron went on the offensive in a period when workers’ struggle was at a historically low level. The stalling and eventual ending of the public sector pensions battle, primarily by the right- wing union leaders of the TUC, Unison and the GMB, only emboldened the Tory-led coalition with the Lib Dems (after the 2010 hung parliament) to unleash the biggest austerity attack for nearly a century. In 2015, when the Trade Union Bill was launched after that year’s general election, which gave Cameron a slim majority of ten seats, the number of working days lost due to industrial action was 170,000. It was the second-lowest annual total since records began in 1891. 

A different period 

However, this isn’t the industrial calm that faces Sunak’s divided, crisis-ridden administration. The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show that in the six months between June and December 2022, nearly 2.5 million days were lost, with 843,000 being lost in December alone. This level of action has continued this year. 

Threats

The Tories have conducted a ‘consultation’ on the new MSL Act. At TUC Congress, Matt Wrack FBU General Secretary revealed that in the Tory government consultation, they had different options on what was a minimum service level for the fire and rescue service. The high level was 90%, and the middle level was 77%. “That is effectively a strike ban,” he said. And in the control rooms, the MSL they’ve proposed is 100%! 

Since then, the Tories have threatened the BMA and the education unions with the new law. TUC policy must now be enacted – a date should be set for a national demonstration with a real campaign to build for it, linking the need to defend the right to strike to the persisting cost-of-living squeeze. 

There should be a process set out if any union or worker is threatened with action. This could include a solidarity demonstration outside the High Court, if a union is brought before it, or at a workplace if workers are threatened with the sack. This would be the platform for solidarity strike action. If the TUC refuses to undertake these steps, the fighting unions must take the lead. 

Political campaign 

But the fight against this pernicious law must also go onto the political plane. Correctly, all the motions call for an incoming Labour government to repeal this and other Tory anti-union 

legislation. But the RMT and FBU call for employers, devolved governments and local authorities to refuse to issue work notices. In particular, the FBU motion “calls on Labour-led local authorities, mayors, fire authorities and other public bodies to refuse to implement the MSL laws.” 

But given Starmer’s constant policy retreats, shifting his New Labour further to the right, Labour can’t be trusted to stand up for workers’ rights, just as he wouldn’t stand on our picket lines. Disgracefully on Gaza, he is cravenly tail-ending the Tories, refusing to support a ceasefire, despite the horrific onslaught of the Israeli Government – going so far as to suspend Labour MP Andy McDonald. 

Political alternative 

The unions must build a political alternative with a clear programme of socialist public ownership instead of the profiteers, to fight for the pay rises we need and throw off the statute book the Tory anti-union laws. If such a party existed right now, it would raise the sights of workers, strengthen the strike wave and also act as a powerful lever on the Starmerites. It would also be a growing pole of attraction during the travails of a Starmer government. 

TUC Congress did give a lead against this vicious anti-union legislation. The strike wave has won important victories and there have also been setbacks. But over this period, workers have shown that they are prepared to fight. They have learned the priceless lesson that whatever is won, more is gained through struggle. Now is the moment to organise that struggle and push back the Tory attack.