It’s time for Labour to walk the Trade Union walk

By David Levene

At the Labour National Youth Day last Saturday, I attended a Q&A with Wes Streeting (NUS President), Stephanie Peacock (Labour NEC Youth Rep), Dawn Butler MP (Labour Vice-Chair for Youth), Harriet Harman MP (Labour Deputy Leader, Party Chair, and a few other things) and Ray Collins (Labour General Secretary).

Less than 24 hours before that session, my dad – a plumber – had been made redundant, and had been given no redundancy pay at all. He told me that one of the things he regretted most was that he and his colleagues had not joined a Trade Union, because if they had, maybe his employer would have acted differently. In light of this, I asked the panel if it was about time the Government got around to repealing some of Thatcher’s anti-Trade Union laws, and to start properly supporting Trade Unions. And I have to say, comrades, the answers I received disgusted me.

At the very best, the answers were patronising: telling me that my dad should still get in touch with a union (which both my dad and I know), and that they would get me some information. Information? My dad has been in touch with a solicitor, who is perfectly certain that the actions of the company have been kosher, legally if not morally. I don’t need to be given an email address or a website, I need my Labour MPs to do their jobs: to stand up for working people in Parliament. Because at worst, what I got from the panel sounded like it had been taken from a Conservative Party manifesto. I got “we can’t return to the days of closed shop unions and striking without ballot”. These soundbites reveal either a profound ignorance or a wilful manipulation of the current situation.

The current situation is one where Trade Union activists, the people who set up our Party, continue to be blacklisted despite Labour promising to make it illegal in 1999. They broke this promise, as “there was no hard evidence that blacklisting was occurring”. Tell that to Steve Acheson, Graham Bowker, Colin Trousdale and 3200 other workers held on a blacklisting database, exposed last month. The current situation is one where workers are still vulnerable to dismissal if they have taken part in official industrial action, where trade unions are weakened by employers who contract out work, where administrative hurdles are deliberately used to make democratic ballots of workers near-impossible.

To specifically address these issues, since 2005, a number of Private Members Bills have tried to introduce a Trade Union Freedom Bill, as well as amendments tabled to the Employment Bill 2008. All these failed, due to the shameful arrogance of our Government who refused to support them. Let us be clear: if the Government continues down this road, we will continue to drive our working class supporters into the arms of parties like the BNP, despite other positive steps this Government has taken.

It is with this in mind that I urge everyone reading this to support, and lobby their MP to support, the Trade Union Freedom Bill next time it comes to Parliament – possibly in the form of a 10 Minute Rule Bill – and for its inclusion in the next manifesto.

What we are witnessing in the polls at the moment is the collapse of the core Labour vote. Working people have become disillusioned with us, despite some of the amazing things we have done in our time in Government. While I am certainly not someone who thinks Labour should just turn the clock back 30 years, and I am proud of the achievements of this Labour Government, the Party needs to stop treating the Trade Unions as just a cash cow, and needs to start walking the trade union walk.