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Free Our Unions is organising action to stop new anti-union laws – and for a coordinated national campaign against this threat and against existing anti-union laws, led by our unions.
To effectively build towards this, we need increased resources. We are looking to raise £2,000. Will you chip in to help us reach our goal?
The Tory threat
Since the Summer, the UK Government has floated proposals for dangerous new anti-union laws. The Tories have already enabled bosses to use agency workers to break strikes. They sat back while P&O sacked 800 workers in one day.
Now they are bringing in legislation to ban all-out transport strikes – and very clear this is just the first step in a whole raft of new anti-strike laws.
The Tories are divided amongst themselves but absolutely united in attacking strikes, unions and the working class.
They are pushing for:
• So-called ‘minimum service levels’ in certain industries – essentially forcing unions to scab on their members
• Forcing unions to ballot members on every single pay offer bosses make – enabling employers to string workers along and delay strike action
• Raising ballot thresholds even further to make strike action within the law
• Other, onerous bureaucratic restrictions aimed at making strike action increasingly difficult to organise within the law
We cannot sit back while the Tories launch yet more attacks on our democratic rights as workers.
We need to organise NOW
Our right to organise and strike is under attack right now.
This threat cannot be defeated through legal action or conference speeches alone. And our movement cannot wait for these new anti-union laws to be introduced before we fight back.
Free Our Unions is calling on our trade unions to rise to the challenge and launch a popular, national campaign to grab public attention and assert our right to organise.
If we fight hard now, we stand the best chance of stopping these attacks, defying them if they do pass, and getting them repealed – or some combination of those things. If we don’t find, there is a greater danger these laws will come in and stick.
The cost-of-living emergency is only getting worse. Meanwhile, unions are growing in popularity and public prominence. Now is the time to make the case openly for strong, free and independent working class organisations free of bureaucratic legal constraints.
Our plan
In response to these new threats, Free Our Unions has already produced briefings and campaign materials, hosted fringes at Labour Party Conference and TUC Congress, sent speakers around the country, and held the first demonstration nationally against the Tories’ new anti-union threats. All of which was expensive.
And there is so much more to do. Despite the growing strike wave, so much of our movement isn’t confronting the threat of new anti-union laws head on.
Free Our Unions needs your help if we are going to step up our activity. If we reach our target of £2,000, we will:
• Produce more copies of our accessible briefings informing rank-and-file members about the dangers of these new threats and send them out
• Produce an updated pamphlet on campaigning to overturn the anti-union laws
• Send speakers and campaign materials to union branches, local political parties, and other organisations to build momentum behind our campaign
• Organise more protests at sites of power to bring this issue to the top of the labour movement agenda
• Campaign for our union officials to live up to their rhetoric and launch a national campaign against the anti-union laws
Any donation, however small, makes a difference. But £20 could enable us to print hundreds of leaflets. £50 or £60 could enable us to print thousands, or get speakers to meetings around the country. Two or three hundred will allow us organise a second, bigger protest, or produce a new campaigning pamphlet. If we reach our target, we can look further ahead – and potentially look to organise more powerful events, like training and organising events.
Please chip in to help us reach our target, and then join our campaign.
Free Our Unions 