Rail workers in the RMT union have voted overwhelmingly in favour of strike over pay, jobs and safety.
Inflation is at a forty year high, squeezing people on low and middle incomes. Energy costs are soaring whilst the energy companies record massive profits. The cost of living crisis caused by rising household energy bills is so extreme that the government is about to be forced into to accepting Labour’s policy of a windfall tax on the energy companies.
The TSSA union is warning of “devastating consequences” of job cuts on the railways.
So it’s no wonder the government is now briefing that it wants new measures to curb the principal line of defence for many working people – the trade unions.
Weekend briefings to the Telegraph revealed the Tories want a new law for minimum staffing levels on the railways during strikes, effectively making strikes illegal if those levels are not met. They also ramped up the rhetoric on the teaching unions. It’s difficult to avoid the sense that the government is fearful of the National Education Union’s campaigning apparatus, as it prepares for a pay ballot.
The threat of a new attack on trade union rights has been taken up across the trade union movement.
TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady said: “We will fight these unfair and unworkable proposals to undermine unions and undermine the right to strike, and we will win.”
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “A workers’ right to withdraw their labour is inalienable in any democracy worth its name. This is a cynical, authoritarian move designed to protect corporate profits and has been wheeled out to satisfy the needs of short-term factional politics.”
There is now likely to be an onslaught on the unions. A sign of that was the vile anti-union (and anti-Labour) arguments of former Labour MP Ian Austin in the Mail last weekend. Solidarity with the trade union movement could not be more important.
I have written about the cost of living squeeze on workers and the government’s attack on trade union rights over at the New Statesman. Read it here, share it on Twitter from here and here, and Facebook here.
The TUC’s national demonstration on June 18th, demanding a better deal for everyone hit by the squeeze on living standards, is a focus for the whole labour movement. Details here.
(The Labour Party Graphic Designers network have produced this art pack for the demo which is well worth a look).