Tories launch biggest crackdown on trade unions for 30 years
The biggest crackdown on trade union rights for 30 years
will be unveiled on Wednesday, including new plans to criminalise picketing,
permit employers to hire strike-breaking agency staff and choke off the flow of
union funds to the Labour party.
The scale of the reforms goes far wider than the previously
trailed plan for strikes to be made unlawful unless 50% of those being asked to
strike vote in the ballot.
In a set of proposals on a par with those introduced by
Norman Tebbit in 1985, Sajid
Javid, the business secretary, is also to require that at least 40% of
those asked to vote support the strike in most key public service. In the case
of 100 teachers asked to strike, the action would only be lawful if at least 50
teachers voted and 40 of them backed the strike.
The double threshold would have to be met in any strike
called in health, education, fire, transport, border security and energy
sectors – including the Border Force and nuclear decommissioning.
In further changes, Javid will:
• Require all unions, not just those affiliated to
Labour, to ask each existing union member whether they wish to pay the
political levy and then repeat the question every five years. The £25m annual
political fund income from 4.5 million political levy payers funds a wide range
of political campaigning including being a chief source of funding for Labour.
• Propose that unlawful or intimidatory picketing
should become a criminal as opposed to civil offence and new protections should
be available for those workers unwilling to strike. A named official will be
required to be available at all times to the police to oversee the picket
including the numbers on the line, currently set at six, in an existing code of
conduct.
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