THE TUC Special Congress described as a “once in a generation” event has been called to “explore options for non-compliance and resistance” to the Tory government’s Strikes (Minimum Service Levels — MSL) Act 2023.
 
Whether the trade union and labour movement is prepared to meet that challenge will not be decided by a three-hour meeting in Congress House, but rather on picket lines, in workplaces, and in union branch meetings in the months ahead.
 
However, determined leadership to defy new MSL laws is needed across the trade union movement. The strike waves since 2022 show that a new era of solidarity has been born.
 
To maintain workers’ ability to fight for wage rises or to see off “fire and rehire,” when employers use mass redundancies to scrap collectively bargained employment contracts and cut labour costs, will require greater co-operation and co-ordination than ever before.
 
In 1982, the last such TUC Special Congress rallied opposition to Thatcher’s anti-union laws.
 
The trade union movement’s failure to halt, or subsequently reverse the tide of anti-union laws introduced since then has ensured Britain continues to have the “most restrictive laws on trade unions in the Western world,” as Tony Blair boasted in 1997.
 
Blair’s comment, made in the run-up to a general election at the height of New Labour ascendancy, is instructive today given the Blairite influence of Keir Starmer’s leadership of the Labour Party.
 
One conclusion from such remarks is that any political strategy of resistance to anti-strike legislation that relies solely on promises from Labour politicians to repeal Tory anti-union laws is unlikely to succeed.
 
The imperative for the trade union movement following Saturday’s TUC Special Congress is to develop a strategy of non-compliance and defiance of the new MSL laws, because to fail to do so will inevitably gift Starmer’s increasingly right-wing Labour leadership a stranglehold over trade union political demands in the run-up to the next general election.
 
Trade unions will continue to demand that Labour in government carries out its pledge to repeal Tory anti-union legislation within 100 days of a Labour government.
 
But unless the legislation itself is made unworkable, trade unionists will rightly suspect that the political demand for repeal of anti-union laws is likely to be betrayed.
 
The tactics that trade union members take up to render the legislation inoperable will be developed in the cut and thrust of union branch rooms and will vary from mass sick-ins to outright refusal to comply with Work Notices.
 
The latest attack on our right to strike contained in the MSL laws gives ministers sweeping powers to impose strike restrictions across health, education, fire, transport, border security and nuclear decommissioning.
 
If unions or individual workers fail (or refuse) to comply, they lose legal protections against being sued or dismissed.
 
The level of minimum services during strike action determined by the new MSL laws varies from 40 per cent of passenger train, underground, and tram operations (that would lead to a suspension of London Underground due to overcrowding), to keeping main rail routes open from 6am to 10pm, which requires full staffing of railway operational grades, such as signallers.
 
For ambulance services in England, the MSL law requires emergency and non-emergency patient transport “as if on [a] non-strike day.” It is unclear what this means given the NHS staffing crisis, which has extended ambulance waiting times. But health service unions already operate agreements to provide “blue light” emergency services during strike action.
 
Border security services under the MSL law must be provided at a level that means they are “no less effective than if a strike were not taking place.”
 
Clearly, the MSL laws are intended to render strike action ineffective and to conscript workers when they vote democratically to withdraw their labour.
 
The minimum service levels will be implemented using new Work Notices, which the new legislation intends employers should serve on individual workers who they determine are necessary, as well as on trade unions. This raises several complicating factors.
 
Importantly, MSL legislation does not compel employers to serve Work Notices and politicians in Scotland and Wales have already given indications they will not serve Work Notices under the legislation either on their workers or on the recognised trade unions.
 
The trade union movement must now push open this route to non-compliance with MSL laws. Labour and non-Tory-run local authorities in England are already facing demands to step up and confirm that they will refuse to issue Work Notices. Public bodies will become an arena for trade union demands for non-compliance with the odious Tory legislation.
 
This week Sheffield city council became an early adopter of non-compliance among local authorities in England, passing a motion describing the MSL Act as “a direct attack on the right to strike fundamental freedom” and resolving to “consider how the council can use provisions in the Act, continue to support the right of its workers to strike and how it should be reflected in our policies such as the ethical procurement policy.”
 
This opens a crucial area of struggle for the whole trade union movement. As Rishi Sunak’s Tories descend into a vortex of destruction over their racist immigration policies and their poll ratings plummet, the trade union movement needs to confidently assert our determination to fight for the fundamental right of all workers to withdraw their labour.
 
We demand both public and private-sector employers give clear and unambiguous undertakings that they will similarly refuse to issue Work Notices.