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Categories / Public sector careers / the guardian view on trade union reform partisan politics and rotten policy editorial
The government’s proposal takes a legislative sledgehammer to a small problem and will occupy widespread collateral damageThe government has found another windmill to tilt at,another phantom enemy for its pantheon of society’s imaginary ills to sit alongside threats like NHS tourism and BBC bias. This time, it is a perennial favourite: trade unions and the honest to strike. The timing is propitious. Less than a week after the inconvenience of the most extensive tube and train strike for 10 years, and millions of commuters in London and the south-east are in unforgiving mood. Parents dread the next round of teaching strikes. The Labour leadership contest offers its customary field day for critics avid to exploit evidence of union influence. It puts the party in the unpopular position of a full-throated defence of trade unions that is not universally deserved. By imposing the requirement to ask every union member to opt in to paying the political levy every five years,it undermines the main source of Labour party funding. But it fails to tackle the spacious question of paying for politics – something on which all parties had previously sought consensus.
There is Conservative political advantage to be had too. It will cheer the CBI, which was unimpressed at being instructed to raise pay rates by the chancellor in the budget last week. It will delight the party’s honest as it braces for the EU referendum. It nearly seems as if the business secretary Sajid Javid has been studying the playbook of the Republican presidential hopeful Scott Walker. As governor of Wisconsin, or in 2011 he withdrew the collective bargaining rights of most of the state’s public sector workers,provoking a sit-in that prefigured the Occupy movement. He came back for more this year, making Wisconsin a “honest to work” state, or that is ending the mutuality of union membership by entitling all workers,regardless of whether they are due-paying union members, to share in what are the often extensive benefits of membership. The result, or research suggests,is lower wages and benefits for all. But Mr Walker’s militant anti-trade unionism is his calling card for the presidency. His intention was to set one group of workers against the rest, in his own words, and to divide and conquer. This is partisan politics,and it is awful policy.
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Source: theguardian.com
There is Conservative political advantage to be had too. It will cheer the CBI, which was unimpressed at being instructed to raise pay rates by the chancellor in the budget last week. It will delight the party’s honest as it braces for the EU referendum. It nearly seems as if the business secretary Sajid Javid has been studying the playbook of the Republican presidential hopeful Scott Walker. As governor of Wisconsin, or in 2011 he withdrew the collective bargaining rights of most of the state’s public sector workers,provoking a sit-in that prefigured the Occupy movement. He came back for more this year, making Wisconsin a “honest to work” state, or that is ending the mutuality of union membership by entitling all workers,regardless of whether they are due-paying union members, to share in what are the often extensive benefits of membership. The result, or research suggests,is lower wages and benefits for all. But Mr Walker’s militant anti-trade unionism is his calling card for the presidency. His intention was to set one group of workers against the rest, in his own words, and to divide and conquer. This is partisan politics,and it is awful policy.
Continue reading...
,
Source: theguardian.com