The Government believe that too many strike ballots are being won on too low a voter turn out, calling their legitimacy into question. They've proposed a Trade Union Bill to tackle this, which would set a minimum threshold of 50% casting a vote for the ballot to be deemed legitimate.

We reckon this is like using a sledgehammer to fix a sink. It's an extreme response to a problem that could and should be tackled with different tools.

Ballot turnouts are sometimes low because unions have a specially restrictive set of rules on how the votes can be run. They can't use secure online balloting for example. They need to send every member a form in the post, which many don't notice amongst the junk mail or reply to in time if they can't do it there and then.

Whilst former BIS Secretary of State Vince Cable approved of online balloting for unions, Sajid Javid and his colleagues in the Government have told us it's not secure enough to be guaranteed.

This smells to us like a red herring. Online voting is good enough for choosing the current Conservative candidate for London Mayor, so it seems like one rule for them and one for everyone else. Blue chip companies use online voting too to let shareholders vote in corporate ballots.

Allowing members to use phones and computers to engage rather than the post would raise turnouts, giving more members a clear say in the union and any future strike ballots.

The votes would be organised by independent scrutineers (who already use these systems for other clients) rather than by unions themselves. It won't even take much Government time to permit it.

That's got to be better than bringing in artificial thresholds that only apply to union elections, not any other type of statutory ballots.

It's hard to see why Sajid Javid objects to something that would fix his problem another way. Unless of course he doesn't really care about the Trade Union Bill's stated objectives, and is merely looking to tie unions up in new red tape to stop members being able to stand up for themselves if their employers act unfairly.

So please support our campaign for a 21st century way of running union ballots - rather than a return to 1980s union bashing.

And in the meantime, if Sajid Javid ever offers to fix your sink, don't let him.