Candidates from the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) in next week’s English local elections will be adding their support to the ‘May Day weekend mega-strikes’ taking place from Thursday April 27th to Tuesday May 2nd.
This is the latest round of action by teachers, nurses and civil servants in the ongoing battle against the cost-of-living crisis – it could, however, potentially be the last set of strikes to be held before the government’s new anti-union Minimum Service Levels Bill comes into law, as it goes through its final stages in parliament.
The new law will allow Secretaries of State within six sectors – the health services; education; transport; fire and rescue; nuclear safety; and border staff – to make ‘minimum service regulations’ empowering employers to issue a ‘Work Notice’ to a trade union specifying which individuals they require to continue to work during a strike.
If a union “fails to take reasonable steps” to ensure that its members identified in a Work Notice follow an instruction to work, it will lose its protection from liability and subsequent claims for damages. An individual worker continuing to take part in a strike contrary to a Work Notice instruction will lose their current automatic protection from unfair dismissal.
This is a draconian attack on workers’ rights which must be resisted at every level – including by Labour-controlled public employers in local government education, transport and fire and rescue authorities, and the Welsh government. The Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf promised the Scottish TUC Congress on April 17th that the Scottish government “will never issue or enforce a single work notice” under the new legislation. So why not the Labour First Minister of Wales, the London Mayor Sadiq Khan, or the Labour ‘Metro-Mayors’ of Liverpool, Manchester, North Tyne, South Yorkshire, the West of England and West Yorkshire?
Or the Labour council candidates standing in the local elections on May 4th?
Build the pressure for non-compliance
The TUSC national election agent Clive Heemskerk comments: “The key to making inoperable the new anti-union law is action organised across the trade union movement. This must include preparations for a one-day general strike if the legislation is used to levy punitive damages against an individual union exercising its democratic right to take strike action”.
“But, as the Fire Brigades Union general secretary Matt Wrack said in response to Humza Yousaf’s pledge at the Scottish TUC, pressurising public sector employers to refuse to apply work notices – and to end contracts with any outside employer who does so – is another weapon we must use”.
“It is, as Matt says, possible to ‘build resistance on many different fronts, not just in the Westminster parliament or the courts’ to ‘strike a blow against Rishi Sunak’s anti-worker agenda’. That applies to local councils as well – especially the 120 or so Labour-controlled councils across Britain with rights and powers in education, transport, fire and rescue services, and health”.
“But while Labour under Sir Keir Starmer may vote against the Minimum Service Level law in parliament, it is clear that it will take more than just polite lobbying to compel their local representatives on public authorities to support non-compliance and refuse to implement the Act”.
Including at the ballot box
“Matt and I were actually expelled from the Labour Party in 1991 for fighting for a policy of non-compliance with Margaret Thatcher’s poll tax, alongside the current UNISON national executive council member Hugo Pierre (who now sits on the TUSC steering committee in a personal capacity) and ten other Tower Hamlets party members. We successfully won majority support to include a pledge not to prosecute non-payers of the poll tax in the local manifesto for the 1990 council elections”.
“We had the backing of the local party but not the national party headquarters under the leadership then of Neil Kinnock, which intervened to overturn the decision for non-compliance and instead suspended us from the party”.
“The possibilities for pressurising Labour councillors from within the Labour Party are even less today than they were then, with Starmer’s ruthless action against Jeremy Corbyn and now Diane Abbott showing how firm the grip of the New Blairites is”.
“That’s why ‘resistance on many fronts’ must include the ballot box too, starting where the opportunity exists to vote for TUSC candidates in the elections next Thursday. Councillors should not be collaborating with anti-union laws”.
TUSC is standing over 250 candidates in the English local council elections on May 4th who will offer a fighting socialist alternative to the austerity consensus of all the establishment politicians. The full candidate list, and the seats they are contesting, is available at https://www.tusc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Left-candidates-on-May-4th.pdf ■