I have written previously about the limited UK right to strike, and the political threat to change the voting threshold in ballots for industrial action.
Vince Cable now suggests that the Government will have to “get tough” on strike laws if the Union movement persists with the threat of widespread strikes in the Autumn.
We already have some of the most rigid anti-strike laws in the western world.
And the reality is that in recent years the number of days lost to industry in industrial action has been at a decades-long low. The Press love to report a good strike, but truth be told, there haven’t been many lately.
The mere threat of an increase in industrial action seems to have set the hares running. But what use are legal protections for strikers if, the moment serious action is threatened, the Government seeks to step in to prevent it happening?
I see no evidence of the Government taking a narrow view of the rights of individuals to protest in connection with the Arab Spring. And whilst of course there are differences between those revolutionary protests abroad and industrial discontent at home, the bottom line has to be that what we can respect abroad we must respect at home; and if a right to protest is not a right effectively to protest, then it is no right at all.
People do not naturally or quickly leap into industrial action. They lose pay for every day they do not work, and in the long run they risk discipline and/or dismissal. The veritable maze of booby traps that run as a thread through our anti-strike legislation have rendered it pretty difficult for Unions to organise industrial action at all. If, notwithstanding the best efforts of the legislators, and the natural reluctance of workers to lose money, a strike is lawfully and properly organised, or indeed a series of strikes, the Government should be looking not at how to prevent that protest, but at the policies that have given rise to it.
- Paul Scholey, Senior Partner, Morrish Solicitors LLP
