{"id":4121,"date":"2015-05-12T15:14:42","date_gmt":"2015-05-12T14:14:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=4121"},"modified":"2015-05-13T14:20:49","modified_gmt":"2015-05-13T13:20:49","slug":"and-so-it-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=4121","title":{"rendered":"And so it begins\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The newly elected Tory government has wasted no time in its assault on working people and the organisations that represent them, as business secretary Sajid Javid announced this morning (May 12) new measures he would put front and centre in the Queen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Speech that would severely curtail the democratic right to strike.<\/p>\n

 
\nThese measures \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which would require at least 50 per cent of the eligible workforce to vote in a strike ballot, with at least 40 per cent voting in favour \u00e2\u20ac\u201c come in the wake of an election in which the Tories themselves would fail spectacularly to meet this threshold.<\/p>\n

 
\nAfter all, the Conservative party secured little more than 35 per cent of the national vote last week.<\/p>\n

 
\nWhen taken together with the numbers of eligible voters who didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t cast their ballot at all, Cameron\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so-called \u00e2\u20ac\u015bmandate\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 becomes an even more absurd mirage, with the Tories winning over less than a quarter of the eligible electorate. <\/a><\/p>\n

 
\nLondon Mayor Boris Johnson, one of the most outspoken proponents of Tory strike restrictions, would likewise fall far short of the threshold if his own tenuous grip on power were held to the same standards \u00e2\u20ac\u201c only 38 per cent of eligible London voters bothered to turn up to the ballot box in 2012.<\/p>\n

 
\nWhen combined with those who did turn out but didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t vote for Johnson, nearly 90 per cent of the city\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s electorate did not participate in Johnson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ascendancy to mayor.<\/p>\n

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UK reputation tarnished<\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n

 
\nThe Tories\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 plans to quash strike action would further tarnish the UK\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reputation as having one of the most restrictive industrial relations laws in Europe<\/a> and much of the developed world. In fact, only Bulgaria and Romania have strike thresholds as extreme as what the Tories are proposing, with Bulgaria being criticised by an independent ILO committee of experts as being in breach of international law. <\/a><\/p>\n

 
\nAs blogger Thomas Clark pointed out last year<\/a>, the UK is listed as having one of the worst worker protection laws among OECD countries, second only to the USA. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no coincidence, Clark points out, that the UK also has much lower productivity compared to its more worker-friendly European neighbours.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIt is hardly surprising that an economy with weaker worker protection, harsher anti-trade union laws and lower pay also lags behind in terms of productivity,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 Clark writes. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bIf workers feel protected, secure in their jobs, valued and well paid, they are inevitably inclined to work a bit harder.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 
\nRoger Seifert, professor of HR management and industrial relations at Wolverhampton Business School echoed this sentiment<\/a> when commenting on the Tories\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 proposals. Seifert said the restrictions might ultimately backfire.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIf there are real grievances over pay, pensions, conditions of service and management style, then staff may individually and collectively seek other means to express their feelings such as quitting, reduced effort, withdrawal of goodwill, and anti-management guerrilla warfare,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he noted. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bThis can be a more damaging outcome than bargaining and strikes.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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Terrible shame<\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n

 
\nMore than anything, Unite assistant general secretary Steve Turner argued, these anti-worker proposals put the lie to the Tory line that they will be a party that embraces people from all walks of life.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIt is a terrible shame and a big mistake that one of the government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s first acts is to attempt to reduce rights for working people that even past Tory administrations have upheld,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 Turner said.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bVoters did not put a tick in the box for this, especially as David Cameron has pledged that he wanted to reach out to all corners of Britain in the traditions of One Nation Conservatism,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he added.<\/p>\n

 
\nIndeed, when business secretary Javid announced that implementing strike thresholds would be a top \u00e2\u20ac\u015bpriority\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 on the Today programme this morning<\/a>, he had said only minutes before that the Tories were the party \u00e2\u20ac\u015bfor working people\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and the blatant contradiction hardly registered.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bMany of the electors, who provided the Tories with their slim majority, are working people concerned about justice and fairness in the workplace,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 Turner went on to say.<\/p>\n

 
\nThis is no idle pronouncement \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the vast majority of working people, including Tory, Labour and supporters of other parties, believe their employers have much greater power than they do according to a recent survey<\/a>, with more than half of respondents saying unfairness in the workplace was avoided rather than addressed.<\/p>\n

 
\nThe right to withdraw one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s labour in the face of mistreatment and exploitation\u00e2\u20ac\u201c a right that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s enshrined in both domestic and international law \u00e2\u20ac\u201c is one of the few tools workers have left to address the enormous imbalance of power between employer and employee. Once this right is compromised, so too, will be the voices of working people, no matter where they fall on the political spectrum.<\/p>\n

 
\nUltimately, however, strike thresholds, which Javid\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s predecessor Vince Cable has himself called \u00e2\u20ac\u015bentirely ideologically-led\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 will not, Turner argued, chime with the electorate.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThey won’t understand why this proposal is coming from a new administration with just 36.9 per cent of the vote to underpin its legitimacy,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he said.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bUnite urges Sajid Javid and his colleagues think long and hard about this move as there are better ways of improving the mechanisms for industrial action ballots, such as electronic voting and ballots at the workplace.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe are open for constructive discussions with ministers on these issues.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The newly elected Tory government has wasted no time in its assault on working people and the organisations that represent them, as business secretary Sajid Javid announced this morning (May 12) new measures he would put front and centre in the Queen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Speech that would severely curtail the democratic right to strike.   These measures […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2110,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[132,44],"wps_subtitle":"Tories rush to smash workers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 rights ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4121"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4121"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4122,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4121\/revisions\/4122"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}