SCOTLAND’S trade union movement is being urged to fight “outside the
law” in order to scupper the looming Tory crackdown on union rights.
The super-union Unite has called for all 630,000 union members north of
the border to resist the “malicious” Trade Union Bill now going through
in its final stages at Westminster.
In a newly-published
motion to the STUC’s annual congress, Unite urges “mass protests”
against the bill once it is passed and “the maximum possible financial
and industrial support to trade unionists who find themselves outside
the law”.
It is naive in the extreme if you believe that you can win any game where the rules are set by your opponent and made to their advantage. The law is there to protect the very people that are producing this anti-working class legislation. This particular piece of legislation is not something in isolation, it is part and parcel of the continuing cull of the working class. It is all part of their ideology, which will lead to a society of trashed conditions for the ordinary people, no public assets or spaces, and everything privatised. To have any hope of having this continuing cull of the poor reversed, you will have to break the rules they make to tie you in chains.
The trade union movement should not be looking to follow rules that tie their hands, their one and only reason for their existence is to protect their members from the ravages of capitalism. To follow the directive handed down by the employers friends in government, is a betrayal of their members and negates their right to exist. They are either 100% on the side of, and controlled by, their members, or they die. If this legislation was being enacted in some other country, it would be labelled fascist.
Working within the rules of this capitalist exploitative system has so far got us, benefit cuts, disability allowance cuts, benefit sanctions, workfare, bedroom tax, zero hours contracts, disappearing libraries, day centres, social services, and ever deteriorating wages and working conditions. Playing by the same rules will in no way stop this anti-working class legislation. Where is it written that we the ordinary people have to swallow this pattern of greed driven economics, planned and implemented by a government stuffed full of corporate cronies. We are not represented in that Westminster House of Hypocrisy and Corruption, there are no cloth caps present among the pack of parasite millionaires. All of those millionaires, no doubt, have their millions invested in the very corporate bodies they legislate to protect. They know which side they are on, do we know which side we are on?
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