I suppose it's a matter of perspective as to what constitutes a freedom. If people were being literally forced to go to work then I would have said this would constitute a breach of fundamental freedoms.
But that's not the case; this legislation isn't proposing to remove the right for people to leave their employers without undue penalties or notice periods. In my view, that's as far as the human right to withdraw labour extends.
In which case you evidently have a very poor understanding of what is generally meant when people talk about a “right to strike”, and appear here to be conflating it with a right to not to be forced to go to work for a particular employer, which sounds rather more like a form of slavery!
You’ll find that having the ability to resign has absolutely nothing to the long-standing and widely acknowledged protected right to withdraw one’s labour in the context of an industrial dispute.
The right to continued employment despite striking is unusual in several respects, and is not a human right in my view. It is an interference with the employer's right to make or terminate contractual relationships, and that interference needs to be justified.
It might not be a human right in your view, but it is in the view of the ILO, the Council of Europe, the UN etc.
You’ll also find that employers don’t have an unfettered
right to make or terminate contractural relationships, this can only be done subject to a whole plethora of (hard won over many decades) protections conferred by employment legislation. It’s interesting that you’re so keen to wish some of those protections away. Presumably just ones you feel you personally won’t benefit from?
I do get the sense from many of your posts that you both look down on front line railway staff, and clearly dislike the unions that represent their interests, so this no doubt colours your views.
You can't simply divide the political spectrum by left or right. There is at least one other axis, namely authoritarian versus liberal. Most of the political disagreements in recent years have been along this axis.
In my view, restricting someone's right to leave their home or enter countries is a far more authoritarian restriction than limiting the circumstances in which strikes are afforded protection.
Why can’t both be equally awful? This proposed legislation is authoritarian, profoundly anti democratic just as much of the anti Covid legislation was, and should worry any right thinking person (I say that as a long-standing Tory voter*).
It’s certainly interesting (and deeply hypocritical in my view) that some of those who claimed to be opposed to authoritarianism as an approach when it came to Covid restrictions are quite happy to see it being meted out to workers (and unions) they don’t like.
*I won’t be voting for them anytime soon, and possibly never again at this rate!
But if you fall into those narrowly defined set of circumstances - which the more activist of the rail unions have little difficulty in achieving here - then it is done with impunity.
It’s surely a contradiction in terms to suggest that,
when unions manage to achieve the increasingly onerous and restrictive requirements to conduct industrial action, they’re simultaneously
acting with impunity. But clearly you don’t really believe in the right to strike in the first place, so perhaps it comes as no surprise that you can’t see that.
I don't see that there is a human right to continued employment notwithstanding the fact that you're deliberately harming your employer's business, but that is obviously a matter of perspective.
Again,
you don’t see it, but many other international bodies concerned with human rights and many legal systems do, including our own (much as this government seems determined to interfere with it).
Anyone going off sick, or getting pregnant and going on maternity leave, or seeking to enforce health and safety legislation against their employer, or defending their rights in an employment tribunal, is in some sense “deliberately harming their employer’s business”, yet these are all protected. Taking strike action is a variation on the same theme. Or perhaps you think protection in those other areas should be repealed, too.
I don't think these two things can be remotely compared. As I've said before, the government isn't removing the right to withdraw labour, it's restricting the circumstances in which that withdrawal is afforded protection from the consequences which would normally follow from doing so.
It’s eroding the right to withdraw labour in the context of an industrial dispute. As I’ve noted above, this really has nothing to do with an ability to resign or work for a different employer. Why are you conflating the two?
I don't see that there is any inherent right to withdraw labour without consequences.
You’ll find there is in many jurisdictions. The ones which don’t have such protections tend to have rather questionable records in other respects: Qatar, China etc. People who withdrawal their labour also suffer a loss of earnings, so hardly “without consequences”. Again, why would you suggest otherwise?
That doesn't mean we can't have a sensible set of legislation here.
This is revealing. You are clearly anti union, and you certainly don’t appear to approve of railway staff standing up for themselves, so no great surprise you will view restrictions on unions taking action as “sensible”.
I'm sure there may be individual examples of minimum service levels not being enforced, but in my experience they generally are. I have travelled around numerous other countries during strikes. In most cases there was a reasonable, albeit limited, strike timetable that could be relied upon - and even viewed in advance, to see if a train was guaranteed to run in the event of a strike.
Countries like Italy are dictatorships?
This is a false equivalence. Italy and France don’t have many of the other rules and hoops to jump through around strike action, unions cannot be sued in the way being proposed here, workers cannot be sacked for not attending work when subject to MSLs. In short the legal systems and remedies available are completely different, not necessarily equivalent, and simply saying “it works in Italy, it can work here” completely misses this point.
I'm sure that the Lords, particularly the law lords, will have a view let alone the European Court of Human Rights. I suspect that legislative delays and litigation will delay implementation sufficiently that Labour will be able to repeal it before it ever takes effect.
I agree. Interestingly Starmer this morning expressly stated a Labour government would repeal it if it was in place when they came to power, which is a much more positive statement than previously made.
It’s a deeply unpleasant piece of legislation from a deeply unpleasant, failing government in its death throes, desperately casting around for a distraction. Disappointing to note (but not remotely surprising) which posters are cheerleading it on here!
How many others countries, even the US, allow employers to sue unions for going on strike? You only address part of the issue whereas Nowak is talking about the proposals in the round.....
Precisely.
I’m not personally convinced it will be at all effective in a railway context, and I think the government also knows that, which is why they didn’t bring it in a long time ago.
There are plenty of ways to badly disrupt this industry without formally withdrawing labour…
Let’s get one thing straight here: in the UK there is no positive ‘right to strike’.
I’m not sure how instructive that is given that there are relatively few “positive rights” generally in this country.
It’s perhaps more relevant to consider the specific statutory protections conferred on strike action that you note, and the fact withdrawal of labour has long been protected under UK law (the level of protection has varied, but dates back centuries as a concept). Equally it’s clear from jurisprudence of the ECHR, to which the UK is a signatory, that there
is a positive right to strike under Article 11. Similarly the ILO, of which the UK is a founding member, has long recognised a right to strike.
So it’s clear that strike action has long been both contemplated and facilitated by UK law, and that the UK government has joined various organisations and ratified international treaties that recognise it as legitimate.
