The United Kingdom has experienced discontent since the spring and summer 2022. After a series all-too-public scandals undermined confidence in his government’s leadership, Boris Johnson was ousted as Prime Minister. The economy has also been affected by a variety of major industrial actions.
A series of rolling strikes have brought the country’s rail network and London’s underground rail system to a standstillOver the past months, there have been strikes on several days. There are also the possibility of more strikes throughout August. Ten thousand underground system workers struck over efforts by Transport for London, the body that oversees the city’s transport, to cut more than 500 jobs and to “review” the pensions package negotiated by the unions. Railway workersAre striking over pay The union claims railway companies froze pay several years ago, and in the current round of negotiations they are proposing small increases that don’t even begin to match the near-10 percent inflation the U.K. economy is currently experiencing. They also strike over owners’ attempts to reduce the number of maintenance workers on the lines.
Strikes aren’t limited to the transit sector.The cost of living is not being met by pay increases in many industries. The Office of National Statistics reports that this year real wages have declined by 2.8 percentThis is the largest such drop since records began to be kept 21 years ago. Unions have become more assertive in this regard. Moreover, while the public’s support for striking workers is uneven, sympathies have shifted towards the unions in recent months, and large numbers of Brits polled do support strike actions — if not across the board, then by workers in particular industries, such as firefighters, nurses and doctors.
The National Health Service, Britain’s beleaguered publicly funded health care system, is facing the threat of strikes, but not only by nurses. Doctors are dismayed at the prospect of strikes. new contractThey would be able to offer primary care appointments on weekends and evenings to patients, possibly to clear backlogs from care that was not available during the pandemic.
Firefighters, teachers, civil servants as well as postal workers, telecommunications engineers, and some lawyers, are also at risk. It is doubtful that so many sectors of Britain’s economy have been subject to industrial action at the same time since the late 1970s.
The Conservative government is just as hostile to union rights in the United States as the GOP. They view these strikes as a threat to their existence. The U.K. transport secretary has attempted to discredit the striking railway workers by claiming they are being led by “Marxists.”
Nearly 40 years ago, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher used the miners’ strike as a way to break the most militant of Britain’s unions and usher in neoliberalism. Today, the government has rushed to pass legislation that essentially allows the hiring of scabs via temp agencies to fill labor shortages caused by workers striking.
Seven years ago, a similar reform was proposed by the Conservative Party. But the change was met with fierce criticism from the Regulatory Policy CommitteeThe governmental watchdog agency governmental Watchdog, which examines the credibility of proposed legislation, concluded that employers would not see any benefits, due to the difficulty in finding skilled temp workers to replace strikers. Ultimately, because of the committee’s findings, and its damning conclusion that the proposal wouldn’t actually save employers any money, the law change wasn’t enacted.
With the country in industrial turmoil and the government in chaos, Johnson and his associates have decided that it is time to revive this scab-labor charter.
The law, which kicked in on July 21, allows businesses to rapidly access pools of temporary workers from employment agencies to, in the words of the government press release on the change, “plug essential positions.” This undoes nearly 50 years of labor law in the U.K.Since 1973, when unions pressed a beleaguered Conservative government to ban the use of temp hires as strikebreakers, it has been against law in the U.K. that employment agencies can’t farm out workers to break strikes. Although the law was updated in 2003 it has essentially remained the same as it was in 1970.
The new legislation was passed in a hurry by parliament in the final weeks of the session after Johnson was dispatched by members of parliament but before they went on summer recess. It also quadruples penalties that courts can impose against unions involved in illegal strikes. raising the fine from £250,000 to £1 million.
The language of the law changeIt is unambiguous about its anti-union ambitions. It states:
The Government has committed to ensuring strikes are not a result of a clear, democratic decision. They also pledge to reduce the disproportionate effect of strikes on critical public services. Additionally, there are other sectors in which industrial actions have a greater impact than others on the public. Strikes can make it difficult for people to get to work or hinder businesses from managing their workforces efficiently.
In other words, if a strike is actually effective, and thus inconveniences people — which is literally the aim of such actions — it becomes illegitimate and ought to be broken.
The bill continued that, “Once this instrument comes into force, employment businesses will be permitted to supply temporary workers (agency workers) to employers facing industrial action. The workers supplied by employment businesses will be permitted to perform the work normally carried out by those workers taking part in industrial action.”
This is a strongly anti union position. UNISON, the largest union in the country, has already announced that it plans to take the government to courtto stop the new law being implemented. Yet, despite the ominous timbre of the new law, it’s not at all clear that, ultimately, it will end up being anything much more than right-wing, populist symbolism.
As the U.S. Britain is facing huge labor shortagesThere are more than 1.3million job vacancies at the moment. This is a crisis that has been made worse by Brexit which has led to hundreds and thousands of European Union workers returning to their homelands. The idea that temp agencies could provide skilled firefighters, teachers and nurses at short notice is a fantasy. But it’s a convenient fantasy for a Conservative Party mired in a messy leadership contest in which the candidates have vied with each other to prove their hardline, Thatcherite credentials. The party and its standard-bearers are desperate to prove to the Conservatives’ political base that it is only they who are able to get “tough” on workers whose strike actions are causing inconveniences to Brits right at the start of the summer holiday season.
This isn’t a serious industrial policy, nor is it even an effective anti-union policy. Rather, it’s the floundering and the posturing of a party increasingly at the mercy of events beyond its control. It won’t end Britain’s summer of discontent. It probably won’t make much of a difference to the Conservative Party’s downward spiral in public opinion polls. It certainly won’t solve the underlying problem that soaring inflation is rapidly corroding the real wages of workers in the U.K., thus triggering a huge upswing in the number of strikes. But it might allow the new leaders of the party to at least pretend that they’re wielding a sharp sword against political and economic menaces that, seemingly, are now lurking around every corner.
Meanwhile, Britain’s unions are embracing more militant strike tactics than they have since the Thatcher years, and much of the public is supporting them despite the inconveniences that result. Far from weakening Britain’s union movement, the new laws regarding temp workers seem likely to harden union stances and trigger even more strike action over the coming months.
