Delegates at this year's BFAWU conference in Staffordshire
[BFAWU/Lukasz Bemka]
UNIONS must be prepared to break the law and strike if Tory ministers follow through on threats to effectively ban industrial action, bakers’ union national president Ian Hodson said today.
In a rousing speech to BFAWU’s annual conference in Staffordshire, the leftwinger warned that the difference between a worker and a slave is the “right to remove your labour: if you can’t strike, you are no more than a slave.”
The proposed Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill could empower bosses and even ministers to force striking workers to cross their own picket lines and provide an as yet undefined minimum service level in six key industries, including health, transport and education.
CWU leader DAVE WARD tells Ben Chacko a strategy to unite workers on class lines is needed – and sectoral collective bargaining must be at its heart
Labour must not allow unelected members of the upper house to erode a single provision of the Employment Rights Bill, argues ANDY MCDONALD MP
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