Like its Rwanda policy on migration, the Tories’ proposed anti-strike legislation is abhorrent, almost certainly illegal and is another smokescreen designed to distract us all from a disastrous cost-of-living crisis of this government’s creation. It deserves our contempt and our determined opposition.

In presenting the government’s anti-strike legislation to the House of Commons, Grant Shapps said that he had a duty of care to protect the lives and livelihoods of the public, a gross hypocrisy given that the Tories have shown no sense of responsibility for maintaining the standards of our public services over twelve years of incompetence and mismanagement. Unions have described this proposed legislation as, “undemocratic, unworkable, and almost certainly illegal,” and it will do nothing to address the current unrest among public servants or the fact that many of our most cherished national institutions are on the point of collapse.

Shapps said that Ministers will get the power to set minimum safety levels for fire, ambulance and rail services under the bill. However, in our crisis-hit public services, minimum safety levels are being flouted every day with, for example, those in ambulances routinely waiting over 24 hours to be admitted to hospital because of chronic understaffing. Our emergency workers already work with ministers to ensure minimum service levels on strike days which means that, irony of ironies, service provision is likely to be better on strike days than on days without industrial action.

All for one and one for all

Of course, our public servants are striking for better pay: they have had real-term salary cuts around 25% and are facing a cost-of-living crisis caused by a disastrous hard Brexit that fuelled food inflation and hobbled economic growth and KamiKwasi’s catastrophic mini-budget that caused mortgage payments to balloon. But just as importantly, they are drawing attention to the unsustainable state of our public services: one of the biggest problems in schools, hospitals and elsewhere is chronic understaffing due to people leaving the profession and an inability to recruit new staff, something that can only be addressed by improving pay and conditions. They are fighting, not just for themselves, but for the future or our country.

For all of those on strike, this is a last resort – the RCN is striking for the first time in its history – and a decision not taken lightly. Yet, the Tory government is now saying to these people – the same people who put their lives on the line for us all during the pandemic and whom we clapped from our doorsteps – that it is effectively removeing their fundamental, legal and human right to withdraw their labour when all other avenues of negotiation have failed. It also  opens up the possibility that those that choose to exercise this right may face the sack. Shapps said, “we will never withdraw the right to strike.” However, the thresholds for industrial action which must be cleared are already set very high – any extension of this would amount do a de facto moratorium on industrial action. As always with the Tory Government, you have to look past what they say, (“The rules were followed at all times,”) and look at what they do.

Time to Act

The simple truth is that this lame duck Prime Minister and his party, looking in alarm at Labour’s lead in the polls and in terror at the ‘right wing insurgency’ represented by Reform UK, are reaching for the Trump playbook in promoting cruel, divisive legislation to shore up their base and avoid evisceration at the next election. Rather than engaging constructively with public servants, they hide behind the fig-leaf of pay review bodies whose recommendations were based on evidence given a year ago, and seek to promote further division. This must not stand. Please join with us in signing the Defend the Right to Strike petition so we consign this legislation to the dustbin of history.