Dear Members and Supporters,

On February 1st we are set to see unprecedented levels of coordinated strike action and protests across the UK in response to the Tory’s plans to introduce yet further anti-trade union and anti-protest laws.

People’s Assembly activists and Local Groups will be supporting the strikes and protests up and down the country as we believe that only by uniting our movement and by coming together can we defeat the Government, and push back these latest attacks on our rights and freedoms.

We hope that you will join a picket or protest on Febuary 1st and join with your People’s Assembly Local group in supporting these actions. Please let your Local Group know if you can help with street stalls and leafleting. Half a million workers will be out on strike on Feb 1st, let’s join them on the streets and help to amplify our united voice.

Find your nearest Feb 1st picket line at Strikemap.org

Alex Gordon RMT President and People’s Assembly explains why it’s so important to support the strikes and protests full article here…

Why people support the strikers

2022 saw railway and postal workers, dockers, bus drivers and London Underground staff, teachers and university lecturers, council workers, environment and highways agency staff, nurses, ambulance drivers and call handlers, and driving instructors all take strike action to defend jobs and services, and to demand fair pay to match rampant increases in costs of food, energy, and housing.

By the end of 2022, over a million workers across Britain had taken strike action calling for wage increases to counter rising living costs.

Build a United Front

Now, Grant Shapps has proposed a Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill, which is intended to make strikes illegal with sanctions for unlawful strike action falling not only on trade unions, but on individual trade unionists.

Shapps’ anti-strike Bill encourages employers to sack workers who refuse to cross their own union’s picket lines in industrial disputes that they have voted for and that they support. It is an appalling, undemocratic piece of legislation from a discredited government way past its sell-by date.

At the People’s Assembly National Conference in January 2023 we reaffirmed our support to trade unions taking action to defend workers alongside local grassroots campaigns highlighting the cost-of-greed crisis by combatting profiteering and privatisation in our communities.

Fight back

We must resist authoritarian attacks on our rights to withdraw our labour and to protest. We must resist by all means at our disposal, from direct action to political action. We must demand the repeal of all anti-union laws and work to ensure the use of secure online ballots for union elections and for industrial action ballots.

This is the fight of our lives. The People’s Assembly supports the strikers.

Alex Gordon.

Read the full article here…

Here’s some more ways you can get involved:

Support the launch of righttostrike.org

The Minimum Services - or Sacking Strikers - Bill is back in Parliament next week. We need a united labour and trade union movement to defeat it - in parliament, in our communities and on the streets.

That’s why People’s Assembly is supporting the launch of righttostrike.org, a one page site where you can view all the different actions you can take to defend the right to strike, including joining a picket line, lobbying your MP and taking to the streets.

righttostrike.org

Trade unions won us the 8 hour working day, the weekend, sick pay, bank holidays, the minimum wage and so much more. But we can’t let the Tories get away with attacking workers and making it harder for them to go on strike.

Please support the campaign by taking action and sharing the website.

Together, let’s defend the right to strike.

We hope to see you on the streets on Feb 1st and let’s make this country ungovernable for the Tories!