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Fire Bridge Union members during the demonstration in Parliament Square, London, against the government's controversial legislation on minimum levels of service during strikes, which unions warn could lead to workers being sacked for legally voting to take industrial action, May 22, 2023
THE Tory government’s latest anti-worker legislation must be met with a mass campaign of non-compliance if it becomes law, the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) insisted today.
In a letter to fellow union leaders, FBU general secretary Matt Wrack described the proposed Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill as “one of the worst assaults on the rights of working people in postwar Britain.”
The legislation, which is close to completing its passage through Parliament, would empower bosses and even ministers to sack workers who refuse to cross picket lines and provide an as yet undefined minimum service level during walkouts across six key sectors.
Labour’s watered-down legislation won’t protect us from unfair dismissal or ban some zero-hours contracts until 2027 — leaving millions of young people vulnerable to the populist right’s appeal, warns TUC young workers chair FRASER MCGUIRE
It is only trade union power at work that will materially improve the lot of working people as a class but without sector-wide collective bargaining and a right to take sympathetic strike action, we are hamstrung in the fight to tilt back the balance of power, argues ADRIAN WEIR
