Tory attacks on workers must be stopped - Lorna Slater

The latest piece of anti-trade union legislation, which the UK government is expected to publish this week, would hugely undermine the right of workers to take industrial action.

Lorna Slater is the minister for green skills, circular economy and biodiversity

If passed, it would mean that workers who have democratically voted to take strike can be forced to work and sacked if they don’t.

The UK already has some of the most restrictive anti-union laws anywhere in Europe, and, if these changes are introduced, it will only stand to make them worse.

Trade unions have played a central role in ensuring better terms and working conditions for us all. Whether it is higher wages, bank holidays or weekends, these rights have been hard fought and won by organised, unionised workers.

That is why the Tories have always been so terrified of them, and why they have pulled out all stops to curtail their ability to organise.

The anti-trade union laws that were brought in by the Thatcher government are well known. But they were continued by successive Labour governments that were happy to take union donations without reversing any of the restrictions. Tony Blair even went as far as calling the party’s trade union link a “defect at birth.”

The Thatcher reforms were followed up by the 2016 Trade Union Act, which introduced further restrictions on balloting and set the tone for the proposals we are seeing today.

In the dying days of the short-lived Liz Truss government, her then Transport Minister, Grant Shapps, unveiled plans to make it easier for companies to hire agency staff to work during strike action. This is one of the few policies that her successors have kept to.

It is yet another calculated attack from a Tory government that is all too happy to turn its fire on the frontline workers who got us through the pandemic. How hollow the ringing of applause from the steps of Downing Street seems now.

They can see the chaos that is being inflicted by their mismanagement of the economy and have chosen to scapegoat and demonise trade unions in order to distract from their own catalogue of failings.

Workers rights will always be at the heart of our vision for a fairer and greener Scotland. We will always do everything we can to defend those rights here in Scotland, both within the powers available to the Scottish Parliament and as a cornerstone of our vision for independence.

If we are to build a recovery that works for people and the planet then it must be one with workers’ and trade unions at its heart.

With Scottish Greens in government, we have made clear that an independent Scotland would be one with better rights for unions, including the scrapping of the 2016 restrictions and an expansion of collective bargaining rights.

Trade unions have done so much to secure better rights and conditions for every single one of us. That is why we will stand in solidarity with them.

Lorna Slater is the minister for green skills, circular economy and biodiversity