Labor & Workforce

UK union leader Lynch slams Sunak’s anti-strike plans

By Judith Mora

London, Jan 6 (EFE).- Anti-strike legislation proposed by the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party government is “extremist” and “antidemocratic,” trade union leader Mick Lynch said Friday.

Perhaps the UK’s most famous union leader, the outspoken but even-tempered secretary-general of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) spoke with Efe after joining a picket line outside London’s Euston station as 40,000 rail workers put down their tools for 48 in the latest strike action.

Rail workers are just one industry in a long list of strike action across sectors including ambulance drivers, healthcare workers and teachers, all of whom are calling for improved working conditions and pay amid a cost of living crisis.

After a period of apparent inaction, Rishi Sunak, Britain’s conservative prime minister, said the government would schedule new meetings with union representatives next week.

However, he also announced new anti-strike laws to ensure “minimum levels of service.”

Details are scant, but the government said it would soon submit the legislation to parliament, and said it would affect several sectors including rail, firefighters and ambulances.

“It’s unjust and a brutal suppression of human rights,” Lynch said Friday.

Lynch added the government’s “interference” in negotiations between unions and 14 rail operator companies was down to “ideological motives” from the Conservative Party.

The RMT chief described the government’s “attacks” on the union movement as the worst since Margaret Thatcher’s policies in the 1980s, the decade of the miner’s strikes.

In his view, the government “hates” unions and when the working class organizes.

“We’re hoping the government will have something new to say (on Monday) but at the moment there are no negotiations until that meeting.

“They could have had negotiations all through Christmas, this week, but they chose not to do that. We think they did that because they wanted to announce new anti-trade union laws that will suppress the rights of trade unions in the country,” he told Efe.

Keir Starmer, the leader of the opposition Labour Party who has distanced himself from the unions even though they continue to finance the party, has claimed he would reverse Sunak’s anti-strike laws if elected. EFE

jm/jt

Related Articles

Back to top button