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Trade unions are threatening a winter of mass strikes and a legal battles over proposed anti-strike laws, in the most militant showdown with the government since the 1970s.
Opening the delayed TUC conference in Brighton, outgoing general secretary Frances O’Grady claims working families are at breaking point and will lose £4,000 over the next three years because of inflation.
And claiming Liz Truss’s proposals for new anti-strike laws – to combat disruption of vital services like trains, schools, post and the NHS – would break international law and trade deals, she says defiantly: “See you in court.”
The tough talking from Ms O’Grady, who is stepping down ahead of becoming a Labour peer, follows warnings of co-ordinated strikes by the leaders of the UK’s two biggest unions this week.
Speaking on Sophy Ridge on Sunday, Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “I think there could be up to a million people on strike very, very soon. We could see multiple strikes this winter.”
And Unison general secretary Christina McAnea, whose union is already poised to ballot 400,000 members throughout the UK over walkouts, said the NHS could be hit by mass strike action this winter.
Several unions have tabled motions for the Brighton conference calling on the TUC to co-ordinate walkouts for maximum impact, stopping short of a general strike but marking a massive escalation of the current strikes by the rail union RMT and other unions.
The clash could potentially be the biggest confrontation between the union movement and the government since Edward Heath was Tory prime minister in the early 1970s and the “Winter of Discontent” when James Callaghan was Labour PM in the late ’70s.
The present Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer is due to address the TUC on Thursday and is likely to face angry accusations of failing to support unions on strike and criticism of his ban on shadow ministers joining picket lines.
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Source : skynews
