Tories plan stricter rules on UK strike ballots

The Conservative government will press ahead with significant changes to Britain's strike laws, pleasing business but enraging unions who say they amount to a backdoor ban on the right to strike.

Sajid Javid, the new business secretary, said on Tuesday it was a priority to enact the party's manifesto promise to set a turnout threshold of 50 per cent for strike ballots. In public services such as health, education, fire and transport, the bar will be higher still: strikes will require the support of 40 per cent of all those entitled to take part in ballots, as well as a majority of those who actually vote.

"What people are fed up of is strike action that hasn't been properly supported by the members of the relevant union," he said. "We've seen, including in the last five years, strike action that took place where perhaps only 10 to 15 per cent of the members of that profession actually voted for it, and that's not right . . . especially when it comes to essential public services."

The CBI business group, which has been lobbying for tighter strike laws since 2010, called the ballot threshold "an important - but fair - step to rebalance the interests of employers, employees, the public and the rights of trade unions."

Simon Walker, director-general of the Institute of Directors, said the reforms were "both pragmatic and long overdue."

"Clear and effective rules which can gain public support are as much in the interest of trade union members as the transport, education and health providers who need to protect essential services."

When the Tories first announced the policy last year, they said the threshold would have stopped more than two-thirds of strikes called during the past four years from going ahead. Trades unionists agree that ballots of large spread-out workforces rarely meet a 50 per cent threshold.

The RMT's vote on Tuesday in favour of industrial action at Network Rail beat the planned threshold, with members backing a walkout by 4 to 1 on a 60 per cent turnout.

Data from the Office for National Statistics show strikes are already less common than in the previous two decades. There were 114 work stoppages in 2013, compared with an average of 144 a year in the 2000s and 266 a year in the 1990s.

Unions reacted angrily to the plans, saying they were being tied up in more "red tape" while the business secretary pledged to reduce regulations for employers.

Frances O'Grady, general secretary of the TUC trades union umbrella group, said the proposal would "make legal strikes close to impossible".

"Union negotiators will be left with no more power than Oliver Twist when he asked for more," she said. "After five years of falling living standards the prospects for decent pay rises have just got a whole lot worse."

Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services union, called it "a typically vindictive and hypocritical move by the Tories, who were voted in by just 24 per cent of the electorate."

Unite's assistant general secretary Steve Turner, who has been leading the union's efforts to modernise voting, said there were better ways of improving the mechanisms for strike ballots, such as electronic voting and ballots at the workplace. "We are open for constructive discussions with ministers on these issues," he said.

Peter Harwood, the former "chief conciliator" in employment disputes at Acas, told the FT in an interview last year that one risk of the Tories' ballot threshold policy was an increase in wildcat strikes. "If you make it too difficult to take official strike action, the risk is that you might just get unofficial strike action, people just think I'll walk out," he said.

Unions are also concerned by Mr Javid's plans to repeal restrictions on using temps to cover for striking workers, which they said could effectively break any strikes that do make it over the new thresholds.

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