Uk Unions Angry At Govt Plan To Curb Strikes

On the first day of the annual conference of the umbrella Trades Union Congress (TUC), the unions said most people thought the Conservatives had already gone too far with anti-union laws since taking power in 1979.

I'm fed up with politicians from both parties, in the lead-up to the election, playing politics with workers' rights, said Ken Cameron, leader of the FBU firefighters' union.

A senior minister, trade & industry secretary Ian Lang, told BBC radio Conservative laws had already cut the rate of strikes to five per cent of what it was at its height in the 1970s.

What we now think is - it's time to go a little bit further, one more step, in the light of the way in which in monopoly services it is still possible for trade unions to hold the public to ransom, he said.

 

He refused to rule out a ban on strikes in public services. A wave of unrest this summer has included a series of one-day strikes by postal workers and London underground transport staff.

Lang said one option could be to extend the notice unions were obliged by law to give before launching a strike to 14 or 28 days from the current seven days.

Labour's industry spokesman, David Blunkett, who addresses a fringe meeting here today, was expected to outline new arbitration proposals that would avoid strikes starting.

On Sunday Ken Jackson of the AEEU engineers' union proposed a fast-track arbitration process and other union leaders seem prepared to go along with a voluntary system. But they would reject any system that banned strikes outright and made arbitration compulsory.

Lang poured scorn on the Labour Party's intervention.

The difficulty they have is that they are so umbilically linked to the trade union movement that it is difficult for them to move without either damaging the national interest, if they go too close to the unions, or creating internal rows in their own party if they go in the opposite direction, he said.

The Labour Party was founded by trade unions, in 1906. Current party leader Tony Blair has cut the unions' influence on the party, but they still provide much of its funds. TUC officials said union-bashing would no longer win votes.

The unions were highly unpopular in the 1970s and 1980s and the Conservative government used that to push through a series of laws to reduce their powers.

Now, according to an NOP poll conducted for the TUC, only 17 per cent of Britons feel all the restrictions were right and should stay. Some 56 per cent said the Conservatives were right to introduce some reforms, but had gone too far.

TUC general secretary John Monks said the opinion poll nails the lie that trade unions are seen as historic relics.

The poll shows that people are fed up of being taken for granted at work. They have been put under greater and greater pressure, expected to work harder and longer than ever before, but then discarded at the first sign of any difficulty.