The Lawful Industrial Action Bill introduced by John McDonnell could be talked out on Friday by Tory wreckers — if there aren’t 100 MPs voting “Aye” (plus two tellers) when a vote is called at 1pm, the bill will fall. With only two days to go, there’s no time to lose in making sure your MP will be there.
The arguments were made plain enough by Kevin Maguire in the Mirror last week:
John McDonnell is struggling to win a fair hearing for a law to close silly loopholes halting strikes. Bosses use courts to stop action with the employment equivalent of the infuriating catch-all small print which cheats you of an insurance pay-out after a burglary. British Airways and rail companies head the lengthening queue of firms paying M’Learned Friends instead of resolving disputes.
If a strike ballot is seriously flawed, it should be invalid. But tiny, inconsequential errors shouldn’t let employers off the hook. It’d be a nasty irony if a loophole law failed because only 99 turned up and the Commons was one MP short of a quorum.”
London Mayor Boris Johnson called for the law to be changed to make it even harder for unions to take industrial action by implementing a 50% threshold of union members who would need to vote in favour of strike action before it could go ahead. This is even higher than the 40% threshold called for by the CBI.
Research by John McDonnell MP shows that if the same voting criteria was applied to general elections with each MP needing 40% support from the electorate in order to win, only 38 MPs would be left in the House. John McDonnell said:
MPs and the Mayor of London should not require trade unions to pass a greater democratic test than they themselves have achieved. All trade unions want is to be treated fairly and to have their members’ democratic decisions respected.”
Unjust anti trade union laws need to be repealed and defeated inside and outside of the house