Motion #04
A motion stating the Green Party’s opposition to anti-union and anti-strike laws, noting the Conservative government’s policies; calling for the establishment of a positive charter of workers’ and trade union rights.
This Conference notes the Conservative government’s recent changes to law, enabling firms to use agency workers to replace striking workers and break strike action. Conference further notes the recent increase in fines available to be levied by the Certification Officer on trade unions found to have breached regulations, up to £1 million.
Conference notes the Conservative Party’s 2019 manifesto pledged to introduce a so-called ‘minimum service law’ in strategic sectors like transport, which would require trade unions to facilitate their members crossing picket lines or face fines and sequestration of funds. Further changes to law floated by the Business Secretary include restricting the representative function of independent trade unions in public sector workplaces like schools and colleges.
Conference notes that these laws are the latest in a long line of regulations designed to restrict trade unions and worker organisation, stretching back for 50 years. Workers in the UK do not currently enjoy any formal legal right to strike.
This Conference believes that trade unions and other forms of workers’ organisation are essential to upholding and expanding the rights of all people, both within the workplace and without. The freedom to organise in trade unions, and to withdraw one’s labour, is a fundamental human right and inalienable.
Conference believes the right to organise in trade unions has historically underpinned social progress of all forms, enabling people to win advances in prosperity and social equality for all. Attacks on the right to organise set the stage for social progress to be rolled back.
Conference believes the right to organise in trade unions and strike effectively is essential to winning a rapid and just transition to a zero-carbon economy. Workers should be encouraged to take industrial action to demand ecological justice, against the intransigence of the political elite and an economic system whose crisis tendencies are leading us towards ecological collapse.
Conference believes the law should facilitate workplace democracy and trade union activity, not restrain and outlaw it.
This Conference resolves to oppose any new anti-union or anti-strike regulations that restrain unions and their members. Conference calls for the repeal of existing anti-union and anti-strike laws introduced since 1979, including bans on secondary picketing, bans on industrial action for political objectives including climate and ecological justice.
Conference calls for the replacement of these laws with a positive charter of workers’ and trade union rights, enshrining the fundamental right to organise and strike, drawn up in consultation with trade unions. We urge Green council administrations to refrain from using agency workers to break strikes, defying the Conservatives’ recent changes to law in solidarity with workers.
Conference calls on the relevant Green Party bodies to include the commitments made in this motion in the next Green Party general election manifesto.