The labour movement prepares to fight the government over its anti-strike plans

The government’s latest anti-strike legislation will get its first reading in parliament today. The controversial plans to enforce minimum service levels in the public sector during industrial action have been denounced by Labour as “unworkable and unserious”. The party has warned that the legislation could allow employers to sue unions and sack workers for failing to meet the new obligations. Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting attacked the plans in the Commons on Monday, describing the proposed legislation as an ‘NHS sacking the staff’ bill. Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Jonathan Ashworth took a similar line on the broadcast round this morning, telling Sky News: “The government are effectively saying to a nurse, a paramedic, healthcare assistant that if you exercise your right to industrial action, if you exercise your right to withdraw your labour because your pay is inadequate, then they’re going to sack you.”

Responding to criticism that the bill could see NHS staff sacked, Business Secretary Grant Shapps said: “This sort of talk that somebody will be sacked is no more true than it would be under any employment contract and that’s always the case when people have to stick to the law.” The government’s announcement of the plans last week did not mention sacking workers but did state that unions would be “bound to follow” the legislation and would “risk the employer bringing an injunction to prevent the strike from taking place or seeking damages afterwards if they do not comply with their obligations”. And, in an interview on Friday, Rishi Sunak did not rule out healthcare workers being sacked under the new laws.

The TUC argued this morning that the legislation would see public sector workers who have voted to strike forced to work and sacked if they do not comply. The union body said the proposals show that the government is “determined to attack workers’ fundamental right to strike”. General secretary Paul Nowak declared that the plans are “almost certainly illegal”, adding: “MPs must do the right thing and reject this cynical ‘sack key workers’ bill. It’s time for the government to show they are on the side of nurses, firefighters and all our key workers who got this country through the pandemic – not actively working against them.”

The new proposals will be fiercely resisted by the trade union movement. The TUC has already coordinated a legal challenge against previous anti-strike measures, which allowed the use of agency workers to cover official industrial action. When I spoke to Nowak in December, he told me that the TUC “will challenge anything that the government brings that threatens the right to strike” – both politically and in the courts. “We’ll be determined to derail the legislation and to make the government pay as high a political price as possible. And I think there will be some Conservative members in the House of Commons who will be feeling very uncomfortable about further restrictions on the right to strike,” Nowak added.

On LabourList this morning, we have a piece from Ashworth on Labour’s plans to support people into work. The Labour frontbencher writes: “People deserve the independence, inclusion and fulfilment of decent employment and security if they cannot work. The waste of human potential the Tories have overseen must end.” Ashworth will set out Labour’s plans to reform the benefits system in speech to the Centre for Social Justice (the think tank founded by former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith) later today.