Javid vows: I’ll stop the unions holding Britain to ransom
BUSINESS Secretary Sajid Javid has vowed to push ahead with tough anti-strike laws to prevent unions holding Britain to ransom.
In the biggest crackdown on industrial action since the 1980s, the Tories plan to make public sector strikes illegal unless at least 40 per cent of eligible staff vote for it and turnout in the ballot is at least 50 per cent.
It follows concerns many walkouts in recent years have gone ahead after very low voting turnouts – with as few as one in ten workers triggering a strike.
But union barons say the rules, to be included in the Queen’s Speech this month, will make walkouts virtually impossible and have vowed to organise illegally if necessary.
TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said: ‘Union negotiators will be left with no more power than Oliver Twist when he asked for more.’
The plans would also see a lifting of the ban on hiring agency workers in place of striking staff, reducing pressure on bosses to cave in.
It is understood ballots will have a time limit to stop strikes based on votes from years earlier. Last summer thousands of public sector workers walked out, with the National Union of Teachers relying on a ballot dating back two years. The 40 per cent threshold would apply to workers in ‘essential’ pub- lic services – such as health, education, fire and transport – to tackle what the Tory manifesto described as a ‘disproportionate impact of strikes’ in these areas.
Anti-strike laws have been a longheld ambition for David Cameron, but in the last Parliament they were blocked by Lib Dem business secretary Vince Cable.
Mr Javid, who was promoted in the reshuffle, said curbing unions’ ability to call a strike was ‘something that needs to be done’. ‘What people are fed up with is strike action that hasn’t been properly supported by members of the union, especially when it comes to essential public services,’ he told BBC Radio 4 yesterday.
‘Think of the impact [a strike] has – transport, the health service – on ordinary people going about their daily jobs. We need to update our strike laws and we’ve never hidden away from the changes we want to make.’
Of the 119 major ballots for industrial action between August 2010 and December 2014, nearly three quarters would have been invalid under the proposed rules. Last night members of the Rail Maritime and Transport union announced the results of a strike ballot over pay and conditions, which gave it the go-ahead under current rules – a simple majority of those members who turn out.
Steve Turner, assistant general secretary of the Unite union, said: ‘It’s a terrible shame and a big mistake that one of the Government’s first acts is to attempt to reduce rights for working people that even past Tory administrations have upheld. Voters did not put a tick in the box for this.’
Unite boss Len McCluskey warned earlier this year that members would strike illegally.
But the Confederation of British Industry said strike laws needed ‘modernisation’.
Katja Hall, the CBI’s deputy director general, said: ‘The introduction of a threshold is an important – but fair – step to rebalance the interests of employers, employees, the public and the rights of trade unions.’