SNA (Glasgow) — The United Kingdom’s Conservative Party government has unveiled an anti-strike bill which has been branded a “full-frontal attack on working people” by the nation’s largest trade union. This legislation arrives amidst a continued campaign of industrial action by workers across the United Kingdom against “real-terms pay cuts.”

Strikes have repeatedly been called since last summer by a number of the United Kingdom’s largest unions, representing a host of different industries. As it stands, major strikes are set to continue. Nurses, teachers, ambulance workers, railway staff, and others are calling for pay increases to keep pace with the surging cost of living. Campaigners note that inflation meant that their average 3% pay rise last year in fact left them with reduced buying power. The UK inflation rate last year was a whopping 9.2%.

Industrial action has already produced some results. Last month, Scotland’s regional government managed to settle disputes with two of its largest healthcare unions by agreeing to a 7.5% pay hike. However, negotiations between workers representatives and Westminster have been deadlocked by the hardline response of the Conservative government, now led by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

The Strike Bill, which may pass the House of Commons in the near future, would require the country’s core employers to provide a “basic minimum service” during strikes. This mandate would cover the healthcare, education, transportation, emergency services, border security, and nuclear energy sectors. The new law would allow employers to fire workers who defy the new requirements.

The UK Trade Unions Congress (TUC) has condemned the bill as “undemocratic and almost certainly illegal” under international law; while the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), the largest union within its sector, has called it “an attack on human rights and civil liberties.”

However, UK Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industry Grant Shapps declared that the bill will “ensure the safety of the British public” and see that they “do not become collateral damage” of industrial action. The Sunak government has argued that going on strike could potentially put the public at physical risk due to the lack of availability of necessary services.

In response, TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak has lambasted the government’s language surrounding public safety, arguing that it is cynical and misleading. After all, many unions already support the continued operation of essential services during strikes through “life and limb” provisions. Unison, the country’s largest workers organization, documents that such arrangements have been successfully enacted in various ambulance worker walkouts since last summer.

The Conservative’s framing of the Strikes Bill would appear to be an attempt to manipulate mass opinion in a public relations battle with the unions. However, some observers suggest that the most troubling elements of the legislation are found within its potential long-term ramifications. For example, Unison argues that the bill’s true aim is to “drastically curtail labor rights in Great Britain.”

Union leaders additionally contend that the new law challenges the very principle of the right to strike within the United Kingdom. They point out that the so-called minimum service requirements inevitably force to work some who voted for, and who intend to take part in, industrial action. In a worst case scenario, it downgrades the right to strike itself. After all, the whole purpose of strikes is to withdraw one’s labor in order to put pressure on management to meet worker demands.

Indeed, the small print of the legislation appears aim specifically at weakening worker leverage over the long term.

The bill does not state what is specifically entailed by “minimum service” for each industry. Instead, the government would retain authority to define what is required on a case-by-case basis. Employers would be empowered to then determine, based on government guidance, which employees must continue to work during strikes.

Workers and their representatives would be shut out of this decision-making process. Unions are to be informed of the minimal requirements through “work notices” which can be issued as little as four days before the strike is scheduled to begin. Unison suggests that this short time frame was chosen deliberately to disrupt the strikes and to hamper their leverage on employers. In other words, the government wants to protect management from worker pressure in setting pay rates and determining work conditions.

In the words of RMT chief Mick Lynch, who has become a media celebrity in the country, the measures proposed by the Strike Bill would “make effective strike action illegal.”

The legislation would also impose punishments on workers and unions which defy the “work notices”–something currently not permitted under the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act of 1992.

Unions would become financially liable for industrial action if they have not been found by the government of the day to be taking “reasonable steps” to enforce the minimum service requirements. Unions could be fined up to £1 million (US$1.2 million) and be pursued further in the courts. Individual workers would have no legal recourse against being fired.

In this context, Labour Party leader Keir Starmer–alluding to the way in which healthcare workers had recently been celebrated for their role in managing the Covid pandemic–argued in Parliament that, with this legislation, the ruling party would be going from “clapping nurses to sacking the nurses.”

While the bill has received near unanimous acclaim from Conservative lawmakers, who currently hold a considerable parliamentary majority, its long-term success is far from certain. It has been roundly denounced by major opposition parties–not only Labour, but also the Scottish National Party, the Liberal Democrats, and the Green Party of England and Wales.

Starmer has promised to repeal the law should his party take office in the next general election.

While Sunak and Shapps have publicly contended that their proposed legislation conforms with the UN International Labour Organization (ILO) standards, Gilbert Houngbo, the ILO chief, personally repudiated that claim, saying he is “very worried” that this law could force workers to accept lower standards in order to remain employed.

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