Member Article

Tube Strike: Shaping Britain’s future stance on trade unions

As the second network-wide Tube strike in a matter of months looms over London, the economic effects of shutting down the city’s busiest infrastructure network can be felt nationwide. Members from the RMT, TSSA, Unite and Aslef unions have rejected the latest pay offer with regards to the Night Tube service, which is set to launch next month. Last month’s strike cost the economy in the region of £300m, according to the FSB, as many workers chose to work from home or take holidays to coincide with the transport chaos.

The Night Tube, which will affect the Central, Northern, Jubilee, Piccadilly and Victoria lines, involves a service every ten minutes from midnight until 6am on Friday and Saturday nights. Although the implementation of this service will result in the creation of around 2,000 jobs, the current tube workers, employed by Transport for London (TfL), are disgruntled with the pay offer relating to the introduction of anti-social hours.

While the unions are no closer to reaching an agreement on the Night Tube debate, and left-leaning Labour leader-hopeful Jeremy Corbyn rises to the forefront of political debate, the place of trade unions in a Conservative government is a hotly-debated subject.

In response to the government’s Trade Union bill, introduced in July as a way of limiting the impact of union activity, Sajid Javid, Business Secretary, said: “Trade unions have a constructive role to play in representing their members’ interests but our one nation government will balance their rights with those of working people and business.”

Under the terms of the new Trade Union Bill, there now has to be a 50% threshold for ballot turnout and an additional 40% of support to take industrial action in the key health, education, fire, transport, border security and energy sectors – including the Border Force and nuclear decommissioning.

He added: “These changes are being introduced so that strikes only happen when a clear majority of those entitled to vote have done so and all other possibilities have been explored.”

But are trade unions about a majority decision? Or are they a chance for the everyone to have their say? According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a trade union is an organization that represents the people who work in a particular industry, protects their rights, and discusses their pay and working conditions with employers. In no part of that definition does it mention a ‘majority’ vote.

“Trade unions have a constructive role to play in representing their members’ interests but our one nation government will balance their rights with those of working people and business.”

Meanwhile, Javid’s colleague Boris Johnson told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that it would only be “fair to Londoners” if union representatives put this “extremely fair and generous offer” to their members

“We have only a few hours now to go until they are proposing to try to cause huge inconvenience to loads and loads of people in London and around the south-east of this country. Come on, why don’t they put it to their members?”

In response to the Unions’ claim that the Night Tube will serve as a taxi service for night time revellers, the Major of London said: “They are not people just going home late at night after a night out. They are the working people of London. Fifty per cent of the people already using the night bus are working people. This is a big step forward for people who need to use a 24-hour system.”

There’s no denying the economic benefits of a 24-hour infrastructure system in a city as populated as London. Hospitality and tourism sectors will gain significantly from the convenience of an all-night tube service while the opportunities to bolster international trade at all hours of the day are unquestionable. However, the Night Tube strike has come to represent more than just a disagreement on pay packages of train drivers - it represents the first time that the Conservative government has faced a major challenge from trade unions, and how it chooses to deal with this incident will directly affect the likes of the Labour leadership race, the Liberal Democrats’ rise from the ashes as well as the government’s own standing both in the city, and across the country.

“We have only a few hours now to go until they are proposing to try to cause huge inconvenience to loads and loads of people in London and around the south-east of this country. Come on, why don’t they put it to their members?”

The second Tube strike in over ten years has become a microcosm for nationwide political unrest. As the possibility of a left wing Britain dominates the newspapers for the first time in my lifetime, I can’t help but think that, regardless of the outcome, this clash will have a major historic impact on the entire country, both economically and politically.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ellen Forster .