Saturday, September 03, 2011

the class fight

Britain's three largest trade unions have warned councils against a copycat escalation in anti-union tactics after politicians in Plymouth barred Unison from talks in a dispute over budget cuts. Plymouth has barred the union from its offices and from taking part in collective bargaining.

The Conservative-run city council de-recognised Unison and locked its representatives out of negotiations after failing to agree an overhaul of staff pay and conditions to save £18m. The move prompted Unite and the GMB to pull out of the deal. Brian Strutton, the GMB's national secretary for public services, said "Unions will not be complicit in each others' derecognition and Plymouth were mistaken to believe we would be."

Southampton city council has fired more than 4,000 staff and then re-hired them on lower pay and different conditions, in a move being copied by Shropshire council and Birmingham city council. The growing conflict between trade unions and local authorities has echoes of a showdown in the US earlier this year, when tens of thousands of demonstrators staged protests in Wisconsin against what they claimed was the most sustained "union-bashing" measures proposed in decades.

The essence of the trade union is workers uniting to protect their interests in the workplace.

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