September 15, 2015
British MPs debate anti-strike laws
The UK parliament has voted in favor of legislation that could restrict the ability of unions to take industrial action, despite strong criticism from some MPs.
The Conservative government’s Trade Union Bill was passed by a majority of 33 votes at its second reading in the House of Commons. It will now move to committee stage.The bill’s measures include a requirement for 50% turnout for strike ballots, with a minimum of 40% of all eligible voters being in favor of a strike in the case of “important public-sector services”, including transport, schools, and hospitals.
The bill also removes a ban on using agency staff to cover striking staff, and will require unions to inform employers and the police of strike plans two weeks in advance—including campaigning on social media.
The legislation faces resistance from the opposition Labour party, whose business spokesperson Angela Eagle described it as “the most significant, sustained and partisan attack on six million trade union members and their workplace organisations that we have seen in this country in the last 30 years.”
The bill is also opposed by the minority Liberal Democrat and Green parties, and was criticized in parliament by Conservative MP David Davis, who described the requirement that picket organizers identify themselves to the police as “a serious restriction of freedom of association”.
Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) federation, has described the bill as “the most draconian, the most ideological, the most right-wing assault on organized labor in any advanced industrial democracy in living memory.”
According to the UK’s Office for National Statistics, the country lost 788,000 working days to industrial action in 2014. This is relatively high compared to recent years, but remains historically low: during the 1980s, over a million days were lost on average each year.
John Addison has written for IZA World of Labor about the implications of trade unions’ decline in power in recent decades. He writes that: “Although the evidence on union effects is mixed, it can be argued that union decline may give little immediate cause for concern. Even so, two indicators typically associated with union decline—heightened earnings inequality and a potential shortfall in employee voice—occasion more concern.”
David Dickinson has also written for us on alternative dispute resolution methods, such as arbitration and mediation. He writes that: “Binding alternative dispute resolution procedures lower the cost of a bargaining impasse by guaranteeing a settlement, so it seems that all alternative dispute resolution mechanisms will likely increase dispute rates relative to high-cost alternatives, such as strikes or lockouts. The trade-off is that alternative dispute resolution implementation saves all stakeholders from the significant loss associated with these high-cost alternatives.”
Read more on this story at BBC News and the Guardian.
Related articles:
The consequences of trade union power erosion by John T. Addison
Alternative dispute resolution by David L. Dickinson
Union wage effects by Alex Bryson
Find more IZA World of Labor articles on labor market regulation here