Commons in chaos over union reform
LABoUR MPs tried to shout the business secretary down last night as he brought forward laws to make it harder to take strike action.
Sajid Javid was greeted with howls of protest when he insisted his Trade Union Bill was not a declaration of war or an attack on the rights of working people.
He said the legislation was necessary to stop endless threats of industrial action.
But, as new leader Jeremy Corbyn watched on from the frontbench for the first time, Labour MPs said the strike laws were the most sustained attack on the unions since the time of Margaret Thatcher.
Former Tory leadership contender David Davis said some parts of the bill amounted to an attack on civil liberties.
He said he was not alone on the Conservative benches in opposing plans to force picket organisers to give their names to the police.
The legislation creates minimum turnout thresholds for strike ballots and, in public services, requires at least 40 per cent of eligible members to back a strike.
Yesterday angry unions repeated their threats to hold a general strike, or to break the new l aws i f they come i n. Manuel Cortes of the TSSA said of the bill: ‘If we cannot defeat it, then let us defy it.’
During last night’s debate, opposition backbenchers bombarded the business secretary with repeated interventions and angry shouts.
The onslaught was so fierce that at one point, minister Nick Boles mimicked shooting himself in the head. Defending the proposals, Mr Javid told MPs: ‘Unions helped my father when he first worked on the cotton mills and they helped him again when a whites-only policy threatened to block him from becoming a bus driver.’
Green MP Caroline Lucas said the bill was a vindictive attack, prompting Mr Javid to reply: ‘This bill is not a declaration of war on the trade union movement – it is not an attempt to ban industrial action, it is not an attack on the rights of working people.’
Labour veteran Dennis Skinner said: ‘It’s a travesty and it’s an intrusion upon the democracy of the workplace.’
Mr Javid defended reforms forcing union members to opt in to paying into political funds, rather than opting out, a move bound to hit Labour funding.
The minister was also forced to defend plans to end the socalled check-off system of collecting union subscriptions directly from members’ salaries, with workers switching to direct debit instead.
Making her first speech as Labour’s business spokesman, AngelaEagle accused the Tories of pushing through an ideological attack on unions despite the days lost to strike action falling 90 per cent in two decades. She called on ministers to work in partnership with unions.
Yesterday, unions suggested they could re-affiliate themselves to the Labour party. They left under Tony Blair.