PRIVATEER railway operators that try to use the government’s minimum services level (MSL) legislation to break train drivers’ strikes will suffer a “tariff” of more action, unions have warned.
Train drivers’ union Aslef received unanimous support when it called for backing, including “industrial resistance,” for any union which defied the new laws, at the annual meeting of the TUC’s Yorkshire & Humber region in Leeds on Saturday.
Resistance would include solidarity on the picket lines, demonstrations and support for legal challenges.
Companies that try to force workers to break their own strikes to maintain levels of service dictated by government ministers will be “named and shamed.”
Proposing the motion, Aslef’s Nigel Roebuck said: “I can name and shame LNER and Northern Rail, who attempted to use MSLs.
“The minute they tried to negotiate with us on MSLs, we increased the tariff of strike action. And if they try again, the tariff will go up and up and up.”
He said the two firms had been under “extreme pressure” from the government to apply MSLs.
“The government seems to think that Thatcher’s strategy against the miners — excluding the violence —– will work with us,” he said. “But the companies backed off.”
Bob Jeffery of South Yorkshire County Association of Trade Union Councils said: “MSLs have nothing to do with maintaining public services and everything to do with making strike action ineffective and reversing the massive wins by industrial action we have seen over the last two years.”
He said research had shown that workers in trade unions benefited from a “wage premium” over other workers. “It costs the bosses more, for which our movement makes no apology,” he said.
RMT delegate Gaz Jackson said: “We refuse any attempt to erode the rights we fought so tirelessly to achieve.”
Jane Aitchison of Unite said: “This disgusting Tory government has cut our services so deeply that if this legislation is imposed, many workplaces would be better staffed than they were on non-strike days.”
The decision commits the regional TUC to support defiance of the MSL legislation and demands a Labour government repeal it.
