Letters September 30: Union bill’s attack on UK workers has shades of fascism

I AM very proud to be a member of a trade union and have the honour to serve our members as an elected FoC (Convenor) within the workplace and as an elected Unite National Executive member for the graphical paper and media sector.

However, I am appalled at what I feel is a “war” on people like me from this Government. My union Unite has supported not just myself but the rest of the manufacturing industry during the recent very tough years.

Unite and our members have fought for better pay, saved jobs (including whole industries), supported skills and apprenticeships, ensured we have decent health and safety at work, defended communities, our NHS, public services, worked closely with companies to raise productivity and bring work back to the UK.

The Tory government is now planning pernicious new laws that further shackle and attack the vital work unions do. It is a further attack on the democracy of workers showing the hypocrisy of a government that was elected by a minority of the electorate. Instead, they should be thanking working people and the unions for putting their shoulders to the wheel during the recession, for working co-operatively with employers to find solutions to problems at work.

The Government’s hatred of unions will result in very bad laws for the British people. Their appalling Trade Union Bill will not modernise industrial relations, as the Government claims, but will make disputes more bitter. Were the Government truly interested in improving things at work, then they would not be undermining basic rights – and were they truly interested in raising turnouts in strike ballots, they would be bringing modern, secure voting to workplaces.

As a printworker, I am deeply shocked by moves to take apart our fundamental freedoms. The land of Magna Carta should not be legislating to make lawful strikes all but impossible, and our Government should not be seeking to silence people on social media. As senior Tory MP David Davis says, the Trade Union Bill is like something from the dark days of Spanish dictator General Franco and the fascist state.

Some of the conditions in the proposed new laws like labels and armbands are like something from Hitler’s Germany in the 1930s. Nobody wants this Bill – not the police, the HR managers, agency labour employers, nor civil rights groups. It should be scrapped, now.