Strike Action Threat Over Trade Union Reforms

[TrueBlueTerrier]

http://news.sky.com/story/1552901/strik ... on-reforms" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Senior union leaders have pledged to break the law and lead strikes and other disruption in defiance of the Government’s new Trade Union Bill.

In a fiery debate on the Bill at the TUC conference in Brighton, leading figures including Unite leader Len McCluskey backed law-breaking and calls for a general strike.

The debate came just hours before Labour’s new left-wing leader Jeremy Corbyn’s speech to the TUC and the morning after the Bill was given a second reading in the Commons with a majority of 33.

Mr McCluskey, in his first major speech of the conference, said his union would oppose the Bill using "any means necessary" to defend the democratic rights and freedoms of workers.

He said if suffragettes had not broken the law women would not have won the vote and if American civil rights campaigners led by Martin Luther King had obeyed the law they would not have defeated race discrimination.


He called on the Government to stop painting trade unions and their members as the "enemy within” and said: "This is a movement that has from its inception delivered for each generation continued improvements to the working lives of millions of people.

"It has secured our nation's wealth and fought for the social and political progress that has made this county a place of fairness, equality and social justice.

"But instead of recognising our role, this Prime Minister seeks to paint the millions of trade unionists and their families as 'the enemy within', with a Tory party drunk on class prejudice, intent on destroying this movement as a force in British life.

"They seek to reduce trade unions to no more than employment advice agencies, while turning our members - who dare to act - into criminals."

Dave Ward, leader of the Communication Workers Union, said the Bill was more "vicious" than anything introduced by Margaret Thatcher and was designed to stop unions defending workers, jobs and conditions.

But the most passionate speech came from RMT president Peter Pinkney, moving a hardline motion backed by the conference and calling for mass mobilisations and demonstrations and looking at the possibility of organising generalised strike action.


"RMT is proud that we have but on a series of high profile strikes this year across a range of employers from Network Rail to London Underground, CalMac and First Great Western and we know that you get nothing unless you fight for it," he said.

"The Tories are always ruthless and maybe we haven't been ruthless enough and now is the time to get off our knees and coordinate and generalise our action."

General Secretary Mick Cash said after the debate: "‎When even Tory MPs are comparing the Trade Union Bill to something out of Franco's fascist Spain we know we are facing the fight of our lives and today the TUC has agreed a united, detailed and militant strategy that can defeat this assault on workplace rights."
Video: Corbynomics: A Step Into The Past?

Mr Cash was referring to David Davis speaking on Sky News’ Murnaghan programme on Sunday, when he said: "I agree with most of the trade union bill. I think it’s very sensible.

"But there are bits of it which look OTT, like requiring pickets to give their names to the police force. What is this? This isn’t Franco’s Britain, this is Queen Elizabeth II’s Britain."

[dvbuk55]

The CWU wouldn't call a strike when they had a mandate to do so, what's the chances of them going out in support of laws preventing them when they practically have a no strike agreement already?