[U.K. workers rise up against Conservatives’ attempt to hollow
out their right to strike.]
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“WE WILL NOT ACCEPT YOUR LAWS”  
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Liam Kennedy
January 19, 2023
In These Times - Labor
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_ U.K. workers rise up against Conservatives’ attempt to hollow out
their right to strike. _

Nursing staff and supporters march from London's University College
Hospital to Downing Street during a day of strikes, January 18. , Leon
Neal/Getty images.

 

The United Kingdom has teetered on the edge of a ​‘de facto
general strike’
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as workers protest an intensifying cost-of-living crisis. But rather
than meeting the workers’ demands for adequate pay and benefits, the
government has simply decided to outlaw the right to strike for
hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of workers. 

The Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill
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January 10, would affect workers across six sectors of the U.K.
economy — health, fire and rescue services, education,
transport, nuclear decommissioning, and border security. Under this
law, the government could force these workers to cross their own
picket lines to provide ​“minimum levels” of service on strike
days. If they fail to comply, workers could be instantly dismissed and
their unions slapped with ruinous lawsuits.

Given the Tories’ majority in the House of Commons, the Strikes Bill
will likely pass in the coming months, allowing the government to
force workers to break their own strikes. The lack of clarity in the
bill hands unprecedented power to the secretary of state. There is no
guidance on what minimum service levels are or how they are decided,
no definition of the ​“reasonable steps” the unions must take to
effectively undo their own organizing efforts and force their members
into work, and no guarantee the government will stop here, with
Conservative Members of Parliament already demanding
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more sectors be covered by a proposal that effectively hollows out
the right to strike.

The bill comes amid a ​“winter of discontent” when U.K. workers
are striking, or preparing to strike, to protest public services
increasingly being run for profit. Strike days in the U.K. reached
a thirty-year high
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in 2022 as negotiations stalled across sectors. With the
cost-of-living crisis continuing
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unabated, the beginning of February is likely to see one of the
biggest strike days in the U.K. in recent history, with close to half
a million workers participating. 

On January 16, the National Education Union announced its ballot had
passed
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the necessary thresholds to take strike action, signaling that 300,000
teachers will walk out
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February 1 alongside 100,000 civil servants
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represented by the Public and Commercial Services Union. The National
Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers has also declared
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further strike action February 1. Some 300,000 nurses, represented by
the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), also plan to walk out a few days
later. Further strikes are expected across the Fire Brigades Union
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the Communication Workers Union, who will have 115,000 postal workers
vote [[link removed]] to
authorize additional actions. Many of these strikes will coincide with
the February 1 national protests
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to protect the right to strike.

Observers argue this wave of worker militancy is best understood as
the ​“inevitable result
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of Conservative Party-led austerity since 2010. Real wages are lower
today
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than they were in 2008; life expectancy
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has widened between rich and poor; the social safety net has been
slashed
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to the bone; and public services are in disarray. 

The National Health Service (NHS) is a particularly illustrative
example of how a decade of austerity has affected the U.K.’s public
services and public sector workers. Campaigners affiliated with the
umbrella group SOS NHS [[link removed]] state that the service is
undergoing a ​“humanitarian”
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crisis. In 2022, the U.K. reported 35,000 excess deaths (the
third-highest figure outside of the pandemic in the past 70 years)
which analysts understand
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to be closely associated with the severe underfunding of the NHS. 

Waiting lists are at record highs
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and the number of patients waiting more than 12 hours for emergency
care increased by an astounding 2,215% between 2019 and 2022.
Nurses’ pay has declined
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by 10% since 2010 while there are currently more than 130,000
vacancies
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across health services. A 2022 survey
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conducted by the RCN found that 83% of nurses believed that staffing
levels had not been sufficient to ​“meet all the needs of patients
safely and effectively” on their most recent shift. In the language
of the new bill, minimum service levels have not been met in the NHS
for years. 

Rather than investing in the NHS to save lives, however, the
government claims its Strikes Bill is the way to ensure public safety
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The actual bill does not mention the word safety once. As such,
anti-strike legislation masquerading as public safety measures,
promoted by a government that has systematically destroyed public
services, has gone down poorly with the workers themselves. Jordan
Rivera, an occupational therapist with the NHS, expressed this
frustration
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front of thousands of protesters outside the prime minister’s
residence Monday night: ​“How dare they demand higher standards on
strike days than we can provide the rest of the year?”

The U.K. secretary of state suggested
[[link removed](MinimumServiceLevels)Bill]
this ​“legislation simply brings us into line … with many other
modern European nations, such as Spain, Italy, France and Ireland,”
which do mandate minimum service levels. Crucially, however, these
levels are developed with unions’ input, not dictated by the
government. Many of these European countries also have higher rates of
collective bargaining and fewer restrictions on union activity. 

Ultimately the Strikes Bill must be seen in the wider context of the
U.K. government’s authoritarian turn. In April 2022, the Tory
government forced through the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act
(PCSCA), legislation that clamped down on the right to protest,
allowing the police to shut down protests they deem too noisy or too
disruptive
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and increasing fines and prison sentences for breaches of these new
conditions. Not content with this already grave infringement on basic
human rights, the government has recently announced further amendments
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to the PCSCA, now permitting the police to arrest protesters who
_might_ go on to cause serious disruption at some point. The Strikes
Bill is yet another effort to offer similarly punitive
​“solutions” to the deep crisis afflicting the U.K. economy. 

Fortunately, the Strikes Bill has garnered massive opposition. The
International Labour Organization and the U.S. labor secretary have
come out [[link removed]] against the U.K.’s
clampdown on workers’ rights. Even the Labour Party, which failed to
properly support any of the strikes in 2022, has vowed to repeal the
Bill if they win the next election. And most importantly, unions have
fought back against the bill, with many refusing to accept labor law
designed to shackle the movement. 

Matt Wrack of the Fire Brigades Union struck a defiant tone outside
the prime minister’s residence on Monday, telling workers to not
rely on the law. ​“We will not accept your laws and we will not
comply with them,” he announced. Wrack’s approach signals a break
from the trade unionism of recent decades, which has looked
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to the law rather than the street. Instead, Wrack and his fellow
unionists seem to be drawing lessons from the union struggles of the
late 1960s and 1970s — the last defining period of working-class
advancement — when 95% of all strike action was ​“unofficial
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The labor movement’s challenge has long been to emulate these
militant predecessors, and hundreds of thousands of workers in the
U.K. are rising to the occasion.

IN THESE TIMES - LABOR:  Have thoughts or reactions to this or any
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to the Editor form.
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* The Strikes Bill
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* UK; February Labor Protests
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* UK; National Health Service Funding;
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