“Repeal anti-union laws”: Fire Brigades Union motion to TUC Congress

The Fire Brigades Union has submitted the following motion to TUC Congress 2024 (8-11 September, Brighton). Its perspective – combining a focus on holding the Labour government to account on its pre-election commitments with the need to push further for repeal of all anti-union laws – is similar to the one we set out here.

Congress reiterates its opposition to the Minimum Service Levels (MSLs) legislation, which attempts to outlaw effective strike action in key unionised sectors of the workforce. Congress deplores the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels: Fire and Rescue Services) (England) Regulations 2024, which came into force on 21 March 2024.

Congress condemns these regulations, which state that fire and rescue control rooms and other firefighters must function during industrial action “as if it were a non-strike day”.

Congress further condemns these regulations, which state that 73 per cent of fire appliances usually deployable on a non-strike day must be deployable on days when industrial action is taking place.

Congress applauds the FBU’s campaign to persuade the devolved administrations, local fire authorities and the fire employers to refuse to issue work notices for MSLs.

Congress notes the Labour Party’s 2024 general election manifesto committed to implementing ‘Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay: Delivering a New Deal for Working People’ in full – introducing legislation within 100 days.

Congress further notes that Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay committed to repealing the Trade Union Act 2016, the Minimum Service Levels (Strikes) Act and other anti-union legislation.

Congress recommits to the TUC’s longstanding policy for the repeal of all anti-union laws and for positive legal rights for trade unions.

Congress demands that the new Westminster government immediately repeal MSLs, the Trade Union Act 2016 and take urgent action to remove other anti-union laws.

Don’t just celebrate, mobilise! Hold Labour to repealing the TU Act

By Sacha Ismail, member of Unison and FBU

The labour movement should organise and campaign to pressure the Labour government to ensure that at least the following is included in its upcoming workers’ rights legislation:

  • Complete repeal of the 2016 Trade Union Act
  • Complete repeal of the 2023 Minimum Service Levels (Strikes) Act, with no “replacement” such as codes of conduct
  • Repeal of the 2022 amendment to the agency worker regulations allowing use of agency workers as strike-breakers
  • Amendment of the law to allow workplace and electronic balloting for strikes / industrial action.

See also this motion submitted to TUC Congress 2024 by the Fire Brigades Union (FBU).

Free Our Unions fights for the labour movement to campaign for repeal of all the anti-trade union laws, going back to 1979, and their replacement with strong legal rights for workers and unions, including a strong right to strike. Since our campaign began, we have argued against the idea that repealing the most recent anti-union laws is enough. But in the weeks and months ahead, while maintaining our wider demands, we should bring voice and pressure to bear for the Labour government to carry out its recent commitments on repealing the recent ones.

But is that necessary? If Labour has made commitments recently then it’s committed, surely?

That is not the right way to see things. Here’s why.

In general this Labour leadership and government are not reliable when it comes to carrying out pro-working class demands. Moreover they are undoubtedly continuing to come under major pressure from big business, pressure they are constitutionally inclined to respond to. They have already rowed back on a series of earlier commitments on workers’ and trade union rights.

Labour’s commitments

Beyond those general considerations, let us review where we are on the right to strike and repealing anti-union laws.

The latest version of Labour’s “New Deal for Working People”, published just before the election, does commit to repealing the Trade Union Act 2016, the Minimum Service Levels (Strikes) Act 2023, and the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses (Amendment) Regulations 2022 – the last of which allows the use of agency workers as striker-replacements. It also commits to modifying the anti-union laws to “allow modern, secure, electronic balloting and workplace ballots” for strikes / industrial action. (See p12 here.)

This final pre-election version of the document was published after extensive negotiations with Labour-affiliated trade unions, including a union pushback after rumours about the party watering down the New Deal.

The Labour general election manifesto did not mention these specifics, but did commit to “implementing ‘Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay: Delivering a New Deal for Working People’ in full” (emphasis added – the plan referred to is the latest version of the New Deal discussed above).

Rowing back?

Discussion about Labour rowing back on some of its workers’ rights commitments have not tended to focus on the question of anti-strike laws. But:

• The government has announced non-implementation and repeal of the Minimum Service Levels Act. But there is now silence on the question of the Trade Union Act – and now reports in the media that the government may amend rather than fully repeal the Act, lowering the turnout threshold for strike votes contained in the legislation rather than abolishing it and maintaining the two week notice period it introduced. The Trade Union Act has been instrumental in hamstringing public-sector strikes in particular over the last decade, notably in the NHS.

• There are also reports that the government may not repeal the amendment to the agency worker regulations on the grounds that it was struck down by the High Court. But the court ruled against the change on grounds of lack of consultation, and the Tories explored bringing it back in a new form. The amendment should be repealed.

• In this context, it does not seem impossible the government could row back on the Minimum Service Levels law too, for instance by promoting “voluntary” codes of conduct for minimum service levels that would still undermine strikes.

This is all vague? Yes, but the problem is the whole situation we find ourselves in is “vague”. We do not have clarity on what the government will do and so everything is reduced to speculation. But silence, reports and the general character of the Labour leadership mean that we should not assume everything will be good. Instead, we should organise, speak out and campaign.

Time to campaign

Labour movement celebration about repeal of the MSL law is fair enough, but it needs to be a springboard for further pressure and demands – which can block further backsliding, maximise what we win now, and put us in the best position to push forward to wider gains. The problem is that instead much of our trade union leadership is presenting it as “job done”.

We should seek to organise and mobilise as much of the labour movement as possible to demand that, in regards to the right to strike, at least the following are included in upcoming employment rights legislation:

• Complete repeal of the 2016 Trade Union Act

• Complete repeal of the 2023 Minimum Service Levels (Strikes) Act, with no “replacement”

• Repeal of the 2022 amendment to the agency worker regulations

• Amendment of the law to allow workplace and electronic balloting.

Labour should, in line with policy passed at its conference, TUC Congress and numerous union conferences, be going much further – to repeal all the anti-trade union laws. The labour movement should start seriously raising that. But holding the party to its general election commitments is the absolute bare minimum we should be demanding immediately.

Rather than resting on its laurels the labour movement should mobilise and agitate through as many channels as possible to make these demands. We need to discuss how.

Renew the fight under the new government!

By a Free Our Unions supporter

The election of a Labour government, committed to repealing at least the two most recent sets of anti-union legislation, is a step forward for union and workers’ rights. How much of a step forward depends substantially on how effectively the wider labour movement is able to organise to push Labour to go further, and faster.

Without organised pressure, it is much likelier that Labour will renege on even its existing commitments, let alone extend them. 

It’s important the labour movement continues to press the demand, which is the policy of almost every union and of the TUC, for the repeal of all anti-strike laws, and their replacement with legally-enshrined positive rights.

There is also a place for targeted campaigning around specific laws, for example the prohibition on striking in solidarity with other workers. If this law was repealed, it would allow directly-employed workers to strike in support of and alongside outsourced workmates, thereby strengthening both groups’ demands. Angela Rayner has said Labour will “oversee the biggest wave of insourcing of public services for a generation”: why wouldn’t the party want to give workers greater freedom to fight for its own declared policy at workplace level?

Campaigning culture in the labour movement has diminished to a significant degree, with issue-based campaigning now typically (ironically) “outsourced” to external bodies, or reduced to online petitioning efforts or photo-ops for a few senior union officials. Developing a culture where unions use their structures, that give them a base in every town and city in the country, to mobilise workers to take political action will take time. But we can make a start.

Free Our Unions supporters are pushing within their own union branches and regions for local actions including street stalls, demonstrations, and lobbies of MPs at local and national level. We want to see the labour movement scale that action up, including by supporting any group of workers that takes action in defiance of the laws, such as the Cammell Laird shipyard workers who recently refused to cross RMT picket lines. The charter produced by the CWU Greater London Combined branch can also be a basis for organising discussion and action.

If you want to organise within your union for it to do more on this issue, please contact Free Our Unions to discuss how we can work together.

RMT London Transport Region reaffirms stance on anti-strike laws

The London Transport Region of the RMT union, which organises workers employed by Transport for London, London Underground, and subsidiary/outsourced companies, has passed a new resolution on fighting the anti-union laws.

Part of the resolution commits the region to supporting the new initiative, launched by the CWU Greater London Combined (telecoms) branch and supported by Free Our Unions, which aims to coordinate union activity to pressure Labour to go further on repealing anti-strike laws.

Free our unions: repeal all the anti-union laws

“New Labour tried to present their reforms as a final settlement. We have to categorically reject that. Our goal is to repeal the anti-union laws of the ’80s.” – Angela Rayner, 2014

Notes

1. Long-standing RMT policy supporting the abolition of all legal restrictions on unions’ right to organise and strike.

2. The likelihood of a Labour government.

3. That in discussion on the parameters of Labour’s “New Deal for Working People”, the pivotal issue of repealing the anti-trade union laws has tended to get lost.

4. Labour is committing (at the moment) only to repealing the Trade Union Act 2016 and the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023. These are only the latest in numerous anti-strike and anti-union laws going back to 1980.

5. That TUC Congress, many individual union conferences and Labour Party conference have voted repeatedly for repeal of all anti-union laws.

Believes

1. The trade union movement’s collective response and activity on this issue has so far been inadequate. The sole national demonstration on the issue was called in Cheltenham, rather than London, and was under-resourced in terms of mobilisation.

2. To resist anti-strike laws under the current Tory government, and/or to force significant concessions from an incoming Labour government, a much more active, visible, assertive campaign is necessary.

3. The whole labour movement, including unions like ours which are not affiliated to the Labour Party, must mount a combative campaign, now, to demand an incoming Labour government repeal all anti-union laws. We must not adopt a “wait-and-see” approach, but rather campaign assertively, now, to demand Labour goes further.

Resolves

1. To call on Labour to commit to repealing all anti-union and anti-strike laws, back to the 1980 Employment Act (and including the Public Order Act 2023), and replace them with strong positive legal rights for workers and unions, including strong rights to strike and picket.

2. To add our name to the statement along these lines initiated by CWU Greater London Combined telecoms branch (https://bit.ly/scrapantiunionlaws).

3. To write to CWU Greater London Combined branch proposing a joint planning meeting with a view to organising a demonstration in London.

4. To invite a speaker from the Free Our Unions campaign.

General election: organise to push Labour to repeal anti-strike laws

With Labour likely to form the next government, the wider labour movement must push the Labour Party to go further on repealing legal restrictions on the right to organise and strike.

For the appeal / statement referred to in this article, click here.

By Sacha Ismail

Debates around Labour’s “New Deal for Working People”, including possible attempts to further water it down, have tended to touch only lightly on the pivotal issue of anti-union / anti-strike laws.

While representing the first rolling back of anti-union laws since the 1970s, the proposals would simultaneously leave the great bulk of the Thatcherite anti-union laws of the 1980s-90s in place.

The latest version, put up on Labour’s website towards the end of May 2024, makes the following commitments:

“Over the past 14 years, the Conservatives have consistently attacked rights at work, including through the Trade Union Act 2016, the Minimum Service Levels (Strikes) Bill and the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses (Amendment) Regulations 2022 – all of which Labour will repeal to give trade unions the freedom to organise, represent and negotiate on behalf of their workers…

“The law governing trade union statutory ballots is antiquated and fails to recognise the huge steps trade unions have made to engage and communicate with members. The current system of only allowing statutory trade union ballots via the post significantly impacts turnout and hampers democratic engagement with members. Labour will allow modern, secure, electronic balloting and workplace ballots…”

If this is meaningfully carried out, it would mean reversing the laws governing industrial action to where they were in 2015, before the extremely serious attacks of 2016 and 2023, and modifying earlier anti-union laws by removing the insistence on postal ballots specifically. This is no small matter.

The labour movement should mobilise to ensure these commitments, along with others in the New Deal document, are carried out as fast and in as thoroughgoing a form as possible.

However, in terms of anti-strike restrictions – as in other areas – that is nowhere enough. It means accepting the core of the Thatcherite drive to restrict trade union freedom.

Even a solid and better-than-expected implementation of the New Deal would mean:

• A continued ban on solidarity action, strikes and industrial action in support of other workers
• A continued ban on strikes and industrial action for anything other than narrowly defined “trade dispute” issues
• Heavy state regulation of when and by what processes workers can decide to strike etc
• Heavy state regulation of union’s internal procedures
• Heavy limits on picketing

Whether or to what extent we can successfully challenge these kinds of restrictions, in the current political climate, remains to be seen. But we should try.

That is why trade union organisations have launched an appeal calling for repeal of all anti-trade union / anti-strike laws and their replace with strong legal rights for workers and unions – including strong rights to strike and picket.

The statement was initiated by CWU Greater London Combined (telecoms) branch. At its executive meeting this month the Bakers’ Union (BFAWU) took a decision to back the statement and the initiative.

We are calling for trade union organisations at every level to add their names and to get in touch to coordinate campaigning. You can do so here.

Court win on right to strike

By Janine Booth, Free Our Unions supporter

The UK Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday 17 April that UK law allowing employers to discipline (but not sack) workers for striking is in conflict with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

The judges stated that, “If employees can only take strike action by exposing themselves to detrimental treatment, the right dissolves” and added that “it is hard to see what pressing social need is served by a general rule that has the effect of excluding protection from sanctions short of dismissal for taking lawful strike action”. 

The ECHR is incorporated into UK law by the Human Rights Act 1998. The usual course following a judgment such as this is that the UK government will table a ‘statutory instrument’ to Parliament to correct the conflict – in other words, to specify in UK law that it is unlawful for employers to discipline workers in any way for taking part in official industrial action.

However, it is possible that a Tory government worrying that its days are numbered may decide not to do this – as there is no legal requirement for it to do so – or may decide instead to repeal the ECHR provisions or even the whole Human Rights Act. Right-wingers have frequently called for this, often on the basis of spurious (and racist) arguments about ‘foreign criminals’.

Until UK law is amended to comply with today’s judgment, employers are still allowed under UK law to discipline strikers, although any striker disciplined can take a case to the European Court of Human Rights. However, this is a lengthy process. Today’s judgment concludes a case that has taken four years.

Trade union Unison took the case to employment tribunal in 2020 on behalf of its member, care worker Fiona Mercer. The union won the initial court case, but while the employer was willing to accept the result and not appeal, the Tory government appealed and succeeded in overturning the tribunal decision. Today’s judgment overturns the appeal result and restores the original decision.

Unison reported that the Supreme Court judges were “scathing of the government’s failure to provide the minimum protection UK workers should have been granted”.

Fiona had been involved in a dispute her employer, north-west-based charity AFG, over its plans to cut sleep-over payments.

UNISON general secretary Christina McAnea said: “This is the most important industrial action case for decades. It’s a victory for every employee who might one day want to challenge something bad or unfair their employer has done.

Fiona Mercer said: “I’m delighted at today’s outcome. Although it won’t change the way I was treated, it means irresponsible employers will now think twice before behaving badly towards their unhappy staff. If they single strikers out for ill-treatment, they’ll now be breaking the law.”


The full text can be found here.

Leeds Council opposes anti-strike laws

Leeds City Council has passed a resolution opposing the government’s “Minimum Service Levels” Act. Although the resolution stops short of an explicit commitment to never issue work notices, it takes a strong stance in favour of the right to strike.

The text of the resolution is below, and available on the council website here. Leeds joins other Labour councils, including Sheffield and Islington, in taking such a stance. StrikeMap and the Campaign for Trade Union Freedom are currently running an online campaign encouraging people to write to their local representatives to demand councils make “no work notices” pledges.

That Council believes that the right to strike is a fundamental British freedom and believes that the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 is just the latest direct attack on this freedom.

Council regrets the over the past 14 years the Government have continually eroded pay, and to an even greater degree when inflation hit a 41 year high of 11.1%.

Council regrets the Government’s failure to deal with the cost-of-living crisis and failure to outlaw poor employment practices, which Council believes have caused recent strike action.  Council further regrets this legislation as an attempt to shift the blame onto ordinary workers who have resorted to striking to achieve fair pay and dignity at work.

Council further believes that the regime created by the Strikes (Minimum Service Level) Act 2023 is both unworkable and unnecessary and is an attack on the freedoms of working people in Leeds.

Council resolves to request a paper to Executive Board to consider these issues further and calls on the Government to repeal anti-trade union legislation.

Write to your councillor to demand “no work notices”

The Campaign for Trade Union Freedom, Strike Map, and a number of other organisations have partnered to launch a new initiative encouraging activists to write to their local councillors to demand councils commit not to issuing work notices.

Some councils have already passed policies opposing the Minimum Service Levels Acts, and the Scottish and Welsh devolved governments have made “no work notices” commitments. One Academy trust has also committed not to issue work notices.

A sustained campaign of pressure could force similar commitments from other employers, including local authorities. You can use the campaign’s online tool to write to your councillors here.

Largest Academy Trust rules out “work notices”: make others do the same!

By an NEU activist in a United Learning School

Schools Week has announced that United Learning (UL), the largest Academy Trust in England, operating 89 schools and employing 7,000 staff, has stated it will not use the Minimum Service Law (MSL) to issue “work notices” instructing staff to strike-break.

The Trust is quoted as saying that use of the law would “damage industrial relations and harm [their] image as an employer”. Use of the law would make it “impossible to retain the goodwill and discretionary effort of staff; harder to retain staff; and the reputational impact would make it harder to attract new staff… In the end, this would have a more negative impact on children and parents than the strikes themselves.”

The Trust describes the MSL as “wrong in principle and in its details likely to be self-defeating in practice.”

Employers are not required to issue work orders under the MSL. UL state it is “inconceivable that any employer will in fact choose to do so.”

That is, in the context of schooling in 2024, a rational management policy and a damning rebuke to the government. UL adds that the idea of a minimum service level was not one that could be “coherently applied to schools”.

A National Education Union (NEU) official informed me that: “The union did not have a role to play in UL’s MSL position and we have not been privy to their reasoning. As far as we are aware they are the first Trust to make this commitment.”

It is essential that the NEU now press every one of the Academy Trusts to make a similar commitment. Activists and reps must not leave this work to officials and union leaders, this is work we should press for right now, using the precedent created by UL as a lever to get similar pledges across the sector.

After Cheltenham demo: keep up campaigning, build for open defiance

By a Free Our Unions supporter

Thousands of trade unionists marched in Cheltenham today (27 January), to mark the 40th anniversary of the Thatcher government’s ban on unions at Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), and protest contemporary anti-strike laws, including the new Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act.

That the demonstration took place at all is positive. For the trade union movement to mobilise as the trade union movement, bringing together unions from across the economy, is important in itself. The Cheltenham demonstration must be the launchpad for an ongoing campaign against anti-strike legislation that seeks to build open defiance.

Further demonstrations must take place in London. Actions elsewhere in the country are important, but visible protest in the capital and principal seat of power are essential. And unions must step up their mobilisation. Many marchers reported their unions’ mobilising efforts as sluggish, reflected in a fairly small turnout which had mostly drifted away before the rally had finished.

At that rally, there were stirring words in many union leaders’ speeches. Unite’s Sharon Graham gestured towards defiance, invoking the slogan of the 1921 Poplar Labour councillors’ rates rebellion to declare “it’s better to break the law than break the poor.” The RMT’s Mick Lynch reminded the crowd that “the official position of the TUC is for non-compliance.” The NEU’s Daniel Kebede said that, whilst Labour’s commitment to repeal the Minimum Service Levels Act was welcome, it must be a “first step”, and that unions must push Labour to go further and repeal all legal restrictions on the right to organise and strike.

But Lynch was also on the mark when he opened his speech by promising the dwindling crowd that he would be brief, as “no-one wants to hear a load of general secretaries waffling on”. Unfortunately, and whilst there were some rank-and-file voices on the platform, that is mostly what the rally consisted of. And with few real signs of unions using their resources to generate ongoing campaigning, involving their grassroots members, it is hard to see even the better speeches as much more than hot air.

Where defiance was referred to, it was often posed as something that would happen in the event that a worker was sacked for defying work notices. But a mass strike to protest such a sacking might well involve a confrontation with the law itself: if unions are prepared to countenance such a confrontation, why wait for anyone to be sacked? Why not go for confrontation with the law at the earliest possible point in the process, by refusing to take the “reasonable steps” called for by the Act to ensure members comply with work notices?

Undoubtedly, many union leaders are now in “get Labour into power” mode, having little strategy for winning reform beyond this. Whilst a Labour government will be preferable to a Tory one, simply waiting for it is not good enough. And, if Labour does not feel under pressure from sustained campaigning, there is a risk it will backslide on its existing commitments, and will certainly not go beyond them.

The rank-and-file conference called for in the FBU’s motion to TUC congress would be a useful place to discuss how to build the campaign we need. In the meantime, union branch meetings, Trades Councils, and campaign meetings can provide space for discussion and coordination.

Troublemakers At Work meeting on the Minimum Service Levels with Tim van Tinteren (Aslef), Emma Runswick (BMA), and Ian Allinson (Author of Workers Can Win) – 7pm, 1 February – click here for details

Free Our Unions public meeting with Matt Wrack (FBU GS and TUC President) – 7pm, 15 February – click here for details

fou-leaflet-15-february-meetingDownload