More than 350 workers are being sacked because they would not agree to a new contract that meant less pay.
Care workers sacked because they won't agree to pay cut in council company's 'Project Fear'
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| Council care staff face sack - because they won't sign a contract for less pay |
How
times have changed and not for the better.
Some
years ago, the thought of an employer being able to sack workers and
then in the next second, re employing them on reduced pay and worse
conditions, would have been dismissed as a fantasy existing only in
the darkest recesses in the mind of the most unscrupulous employer,
or in the dream world of some extreme right wing conservative
politicians and their supporters, who would also welcome a return to
sending children up into chimneys.
Now,
since the days of Thatcher and her compulsion to drive working people
into submission and be thankful that they actually have a job, with
her anti trade union legislation and recourse to the courts of law
and the forces of the police, the balance has been grossly changed.
Today it is common for this practice to be used as an alternative to
normal industrial relations negotiations, whereby an employer can
legally say "I will negotiate, but this is what I shall do. If
you do not agree, I will terminate your employment and give you a new
contract, implementing the changes that I am demanding. Take it or
leave it."
The
most glaring example in recent months, of this outrageous abuse of
the employers position, is the long running Junior Doctors dispute
with Jeremy Hunt and the conservative government. There have been
numerous examples across other industries not least of all in
transport and local authorities and now comes this latest case where
more
than 350 workers are being sacked by the county–council owned
social care company,
because they would not agree to a new contract that meant less pay.
It is an outrage and it is wrong.
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The
reason why that, in the first part of this 21st Century, we are still
facing the abuses of rogue employers and the unscrupulous politicians
who enthusiastically support them, is the failure of successive
Labour party governments to repeal or even amend the anti trade union
legislation passed during the 1980's and early 1990's. In fact, the
government of Tony Blair, 1997 to 2007 and to a lesser extent the
government of Gordon Brown 2007 to 2010, consolidated and expanded
legislation placing even more restrictions and available sanctions on
working people in this country.
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| Did nothing to repeal anti working people lgislation |
It
is not, nor should it ever be the role of the Labour party, either by
design or omission, to perpetuate or introduce, policies and
legislation, which are detrimental to or not in the best interests of
those people that we seek to represent.
It
must be a clear objective and task of the next Labour government and
a policy which must be included in our manifesto as a firm
commitment, to repeal all anti Trade Union legislation passed into
law since 1980, to restore the principle of "Free Collective
bargaining" in the workplace, remove the punitive restrictions
on the rights to peacefully picket, restore the right to demonstrate
and protest against exploitation, restore the rights to withdraw
labour and to end the restrictions on the right of working people to
organise and join Trade Unions.
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Working
people in this country have in many cases, been reduced to the levels
of slave labour with Zero hour contracts, imposed short time working,
less than minimum wage payments and often dangerous working
condition. We in the Labour party and Trade Union movement, must lead
the way in the struggle to restore decent working conditions and
practices and bring back balance to the current grossly distorted
worker to employer relationship.
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