This is terrifying. The government is about to eliminate our rights to collectively bargain for safe working conditions, fair wages and healthy working hours -- and we have just weeks to stop it.
In the biggest attack on workers' rights in 30 years, David Cameron's government is pushing through legislation that will bring our trade unions to their knees.
It will make legal strikes all but impossible, potentially criminalise picketing, allow corporations to hire strike-breaking agency staff and introduce rules that are aimed squarely at bankrupting unions. And that's just for starters.
Our trade unions are worth defending. They protect ordinary workers -- care workers, teachers, nurses, shop workers, cleaners -- from poor conditions, low pay and unfair dismissal. But now they need our help -- and they need it fast, before the Trade Union Bill has its second reading in the Commons in just a few weeks' time.
David Cameron: scrap the Trade Union Bill. It's unnecessary, undemocratic and deeply unjust.
Trade unions are central to our country's proud tradition of liberty and democracy. Over the centuries, workers who organised themselves into unions have fought corporate power to give us the weekend, the eight-hour day, paid holidays, paid sick leave, paid maternity leave and pretty much every other working right we now enjoy.
Today, unions help ordinary people fight contemporary exploitation. While the media only pays attention when they're striking, the day-to-day work of unions involves negotiating much-needed pay rises, fighting unfair dismissal, dealing with workplace problems before they become disputes and running programmes like the TUC's education programme, which has improved basic skills for hundreds of thousands of people.
The Trade Union Bill will dramatically weaken unions' powers and cut off their funding-- leaving the door wide open to unscrupulous big businesses to treat their workers badly.
The only way to fight corporate power is through people power. Let's stand with the union members who have done so much to secure our rights.
Let's get David Cameron to scrap the outrageous Trade Union Bill.
**********
More information:
Biggest crackdown on trade unions for 30 years launched by Conservatives, The Guardian, 15 July 2015
PM 'rigging rules' by changing law on trade union political funds – Harman, The Guardian, 15 July 2015
The Trade Unions Bill is the beginning of the end for all workers' rights, Politics.co.uk, 15 July 2015