Unite chief urges union bosses to again employees who break Tory anti-strike legal guidelines

Unions should again employees who break the Tories’ draconian new anti-strike legal guidelines, Unite chief Sharon Graham has warned.

And Ms Graham known as on fellow union leaders to decide to performing “outside the law” if needed in solidarity with employees and different unions sanctioned below the laws. TUC affiliated Unions in the present day agreed to “refuse to tell our members to cross a picket line” in defiance of the legislation at an emergency assembly in London.

From this week “minimum service levels” are being enforced for workers together with rail employees, ambulance and different emergency service employees. Branded a “stealth ban” on the correct to strike, it might imply some employees are by no means legally allowed to strike, as providers are required to offer as much as 80% of the traditional assets.

Critics argue employers and unions already agree minimal service ranges and regularly stand down strikes to take care of “life and limb” emergencies. And say all of the legislation will obtain is rising tensions between employees and managers.

Unite just lately rewrote its rulebook to permit it to function in breach of the legislation when it has no different possibility.

“You don’t want to do that unless it’s absolutely necessary,” Ms Graham instructed this newspaper. “But we believe that this legislation is unlawful. And because it’s unlawful, we believe there are going to be times we will be pushed outside the law.”

The Trades Union Congress agreed to work collectively to withstand the brand new legislation, which General Secretary Paul Nowak branded “unfair” and “undemocratic.”

Speaking to the union’s Special Congress in London, the physique’s first emergency assembly in many years, Mr Nowak mentioned: “We won’t be quiet. We won’t be bullied. And we won’t be intimidated by this government.” He indicated employees ought to be ready to defy the legislation moderately than break a strike, saying: “As a younger commerce union activist, one of many first classes I learnt was that you do not cross a picket line. And it doesn’t matter what legal guidelines they cross. Or how they threaten us. This motion will not be within the enterprise of telling any employee to cross a picket line.”

Ms Graham said the new law amounted to the government “declaring war on workers.”

She said: “What I’d like us to commit to is that we work together. Because one of our unions is going to be the first union asked to sign one of these work notices. And when that happens I think all of our unions have got to come together and use all of our brains and our brawn.”

Speaking after the emergency assembly, Fire Brigades Union normal secretary Matt Wrack mentioned yesterday’s settlement “fired the starting gun on a campaign of resistance”.

He mentioned: “This new law is an attempt to ban strikes in many sectors of the economy, including the fire and rescue service. The trade union movement cannot passively accept that outcome, and it won’t. Rather than negotiate with frontline workers during a cost of living crisis, the Tories are threatening them with the sack. This is an attack on our basic democratic rights. We cannot rely on judges and politicians to protect us. Workers must defend themselves.

“Crucially, unions have today agreed that they will refuse to tell their members to cross picket lines – a clear act of defiance against the Act. We now need to build a mass movement of resistance and solidarity to break these authoritarian new laws.”