Another sublimely hypocritical
policy that ought to be in a comedy, not in reality. The Conservatives think
that essential public services shouldn’t be disrupted by action based on
undemocratic mandates. They define this as achieving at least 40% of the votes
of everyone who could vote, as well as a majority of the people who do vote.
The Conservatives
were elected with 37% of a 66% turnout, which is
24% of the electorate. According to their own beliefs, they have no mandate to
interfere with health, education, fire and transport (the areas they want to
subject to their new rule about strike action).
You could stop
reading there and not miss much, but there is more detail. The Conservatives
call this an important step to ‘rebalance
the interests of employers, employees, the public and the rights of trade
unions.’ Given that employees have already seen none of the economic growth
of the last 15 years, the Conservatives should probably have written ‘further
unbalance the interests’. This policy betrays the ideological antipathy
Conservatives have to organized labour. As right-wingers in favour of
deregulation and unfettered competition they should be lifting restrictions on
unions, not creating more.
Speaking of
which, the manifesto promises numerous other tweaks to regulations affecting
unions. Some seem sensible, such as tackling ‘intimidation of non-striking
workers’, but without further information this could as easily be a Trojan
horse that limits the right of strikers to protest rather than protecting
non-strikers.
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