Government plans for a new law on minimum service levels during industrial action could leave workers being denied their right to strike.
Waves of Strikes
There is a seemingly constant wave of strikes recently due to huge hikes in inflation without adequate wage increases to match. This is causing huge amounts of disruption for the UK public, which can certainly be frustrating, but that is the point of strikes!
If we can recognise that these workers striking is causing this much disruption, we can also recognise how much we rely on their service. If we need their services this much to go about our daily lives, surely we can also understand why they deserve to be fairly paid.
If we take nurses as an example, their average pay has failed to increase in line with inflation or with private sector wage increases for over a decade, meaning real wage decreases over time. Over the course of a year between 2021 and 2022 in England, 1 in 9 nurses left active service. We need to ask ourselves why, and the answer seems quite clear… why would people want to work somewhere heavily understaffed, where they are overworked and underpaid?
Since June 2022, many workers have undergone strikes, including (but not limited to) the following professions:
- Rail employees
- Civil servants
- Nurses
- University staff
- Border force staff
- Ambulance workers
- Midwives
- Postal workers
- Physiotherapists
The Strikes Bill
The Trade Union and Labour Relations Act 1992 has protected employee rights for decades and this protection is now at a real risk of erosion. The Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill would amend the 1992 Act to “enable employers to issue work notices to require the minimum service levels to be delivered for particular strikes in specified services.”
The Union would then be expected to take reasonable steps to ensure the compliance of their members, and if failing to do so, would face paying huge damages. The Bill would essentially force Unions to go against the best interests of their members.
Its Implications
The Strikes Bill has now been passed in the House of Commons (315 votes to 246). It now needs to pass through the House of Lords to come into force.
Grant Shapps, the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, has claimed that Labour, and others in opposition, are “putting lives at risk” by planning to vote against this bill.
However, many have criticised it for removing workers’ rights. If the bill passes, hundreds of thousands of people working in the public sector will be unable to exercise their right to strike. This means that many who have democratically and legally voted for strike action will be required to work during periods of industrial action, and face being sacked if they fail to comply.
The Trades Union Congress have described the bill as a “draconian piece of legislation” and that “forcing unions to send their members across picket lines is a significant infringement of their freedoms.”
UNISON assistant general secretary, Jon Richards, has described it as “a bill that gives all powers to the government and infringes workers’ rights, undermines democracy and doesn’t allow proper oversight by Parliament.”