Announcement: TUC demonstration for a Trade Union Freedom Bill organised for the May Day Bank Holiday in London

www.tuc.org.uk/maydaygame

The case for a Trade Union Freedom Bill

In 1906 unions won the legal right to organise industrial action, but successive anti-union restrictions mean that union rights are weaker than those introduced 100 years ago. We need changes in the law to protect workers properly when they take official industrial action; cut red tape for unions; and allow supportive action against companies indirectly involved in a dispute.

Better protection for workers

All workers should have the right to strike or take official industrial action free from the fear of dismissal or victimisation.

Employers shouldn't be allowed to sack or penalise staff for taking action before, during or after a dispute.

Employers should be banned from taking unfair deductions from workers' pay packets for taking part in official industrial action. Workers should have the right to fair pay for the work they do.

Workers should be able to enforce these rights easily and effectively. The courts should be able to order employers to stop penalising staff before a full hearing, and order that sacked workers should get their jobs back.

Employers should be stopped from hiring agency workers to carry out the work normally done by staff taking official industrial action.

Cut red tape for unions

Bureaucratic rules about industrial action notices and ballots should be simplified.
Unions should have to give an employer only seven days' notice of the proposed start of industrial action. Unions should not have to give notice of a ballot.

Unions should be free to ballot for action, even if there has been an unsuccessful prior call for industrial action.

An employer should be required to supply information needed by unions to comply with balloting and notice rules.

Employers should not be allowed to use legal loopholes to get injunctions stopping industrial action. Injunctions should not be granted for minor technical errors, when a clear majority of members have voted in favour of industrial action.

Balloting rules should be brought into line with how MPs are elected. Ballots should stand unless unions make a mistake that could have changed the ballot result.

Prison officers should be allowed to take industrial action.

Supportive action

The law on industrial action is years out of date. It does not recognise changes in the economy such as contracting out, modern business structures and the complex patterns of modern ownership.

Unions should be able to take industrial action:

Over the terms and conditions offered by a future employer where jobs are being transferred to the new employer

Against associated employers of the employer involved in a primary dispute, which will help to ensure employers cannot use technical loopholes to prevent workers in the same workplace, with the same management structure and effectively the same employer from taking action in support of each other.

Where there is official action being taken in one workplace, supportive action against another employer should be allowed after a ballot:

When work or production has been transferred to that employer during a dispute to break a strike; or

Where a union is taking defensive action in the first workplace and the other employer has contributed to the dispute, for example, by aggressively cutting costs.