Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall oppose plans to criminalise picketing, allow employers to hire strike-breaking agency staff and require opt-in for political levy

Labour’s leadership candidates have condemned government plans to change strike laws as being an ideologically driven attack on the labour movement.

The biggest crackdown on trade union rights for 30 years will be unveiled on Wednesday, including plans to criminalise picketing, permit employers to hire strike-breaking agency staff and choke off the flow of union funds to the Labour party.

The scale of the reforms goes far wider than the previously trailed plan for strikes to be made unlawful unless 50% of those being asked to strike vote in the ballot.

“This ideologically driven attack on Britain’s trade unions puts narrow Tory party interests ahead of what is right for the country,” said Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary. “So much for the Tories’ claims to be the party of working people. This is a nasty attack on the organisations that support working people to get on.”

Fellow Labour leadership hopeful Liz Kendall said the plans amounted to a blatant political attack on the labour movement. “The option of withdrawing your labour if you are unhappy with your terms of employment is a basic part of the centuries-old deal for workers in Britain,” she said.

Jeremy Corbyn described the plans as draconian and said they would make it harder for workers to get pay rises, stop job losses and improve working conditions.

Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary, said: “Just as Labour doesn’t win when it seeks conflict with business, I don’t see how constantly provoking and picking fights with the unions helps the UK’s productivity problem.”

But Nick Boles, the skills minister, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “All we’re trying to do is strike a reasonable and fair balance between the interests of trade unions and the interests of people who are trying to get to work on time and can only really get to work with one means of transport.” He added that it was “absolutely right and proper” that workers should have the ability to strike.

Boles argued that most of the biggest strikes in recent years had achieved the necessary support from union members to have gone ahead under the proposed new rules, including last week’s 24-hour strike by tube drivers.

Jeremy Corbyn MP (@jeremycorbyn) This attack on unions will make it harder to get a pay rise, stop job losses, improve working conditions - I'll fight this draconian plan

In a set of proposals on a par with those introduced by Norman Tebbit in 1985, Sajid Javid, the business secretary, is also to require that in most key public services at least 40% of those asked to vote support the strike. In the case of 100 teachers asked to strike, the action would only be lawful if at least 50 teachers voted and 40 of them backed the strike.

The double-threshold would have to be met in any strike called in the health, education, firefighting, transport, border security and energy sectors – including the Border Force and nuclear decommissioning.



In further changes, Javid will:

• Require all unions, not just those affiliated to Labour, to ask each existing union member whether they wish to pay the political levy and then repeat the question every five years. The £25m annual political fund income from 4.5 million political levy-payers funds a wide range of political campaigning, including being a chief source of funding for Labour.

• Propose that unlawful or intimidatory picketing should become a criminal as opposed to civil offence and new protections should be available for those workers unwilling to strike. A named official will be required to be available at all times to the police to oversee the picket, including the numbers on the line, currently set at six, in an existing code of conduct.

• Compel unions to renew any strike mandate with a fresh ballot within four months of the first ballot and give employers the right to hire strike-breaking agency staff as well as require a union to give the employer at least a fortnight’s notice before the industrial action starts.



• Empower the government to set a limit on the proportion of working time any public sector worker can spend on trade union duties.

• Give the government certification officer powers to fine trade unions as much as £20,000 for breaches of reporting rules, including an annual audit on its protests and pickets. The certification officer will also have power to initiate investigations and will in future be funded by a joint levy of unions and employers



• Require a clear description of the trade dispute and the planned industrial action on the ballot paper, so that all union members are clear what they are voting for.

The number of working days lost due to strikes was 704,000 in the 12 months to April 2015, but this was a far cry from the near-13m days lost through strike action on average in the 1970s, the heyday of union militancy.

The government says it feels forced to act due to the number of strikes called on the London underground, railways or in schools based on small turnouts or two-year-old ballot mandates.

Mick Whelan, the leader of the train drivers’ union, Aslef, has already described the attack on union rights as redolent of fascist Germany, a comment echoed by Mick Cash, the leader of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union, who said the plan “mirrors the actions of hard-right regimes throughout history”.

Cash added: “The trade union movement will unite to fight this brutal assault on the most basic of human rights and that campaign will be taken into the communities who stand to lose access to safe and reliable services as this noose of the anti-union laws is twisted round our necks.”

Liz Kendall (@LizforLeader) “Tory attacks on right to strike and trade unions are clearly wrong. I’ll oppose them and as Prime Minister I’d reverse them.” - LK

Paul Kenny, the GMB general secretary, warned the proposals would poison industrial relations in the UK since they removed all incentives for employers to heed their own workers and settle disputes. He said: “When workers jump through draconian hurdles for their vote for strike action to be lawful, the employers can then ignore the will of their own workers. Workers will have to give employers 14 days’ notice of strike action. That is more than enough time for employers to legally hire another workforce to break the strike.”

The changes to the current system of contracting out of paying the political levy are likely to be equally controversial, since there had been an unwritten understanding at Westminster that no party would introduce partisan reforms to party funding without cross-party consensus.



Repeated attempts, notably by the former Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, to reach consensus on funding reform foundered when the Conservatives refused to accept a lower individual donation cap and Labour resisted major changes to the political levy.

The Javid plans, which were not clearly set out in the Conservative manifesto, are likely to blow a hole in Labour party funding because the number of union members who will proactively support paying the political levy will be much lower than those who pay the political levy through inertia.

Kenny said: “It is clear the Tory party high command intend to make the Labour party bankrupt by cutting off the main source of funding that they have relied on since the 1930s. This is aimed at undermining political campaigning by unions on behalf of their members and communities.”

He said the proposals were one-sided since there were no parallel proposals to insert more democratic requirements on company donations to parties.