Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Gareth Snell and Louie French

Report stage
Wednesday 12th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr French]

As we have seen already—this is what I was talking about—the fairytale says that if we improve industrial relations and give trade unions all the money they want, suddenly there will not be any strikes. But what has happened in practice since the Labour Government came in? Trade unions have been given all the money, and they are still threatening to go on strike.

This Bill really does read like a militant trade union wish list. Strike mandates have doubled from six to 12 months, allowing trade unions to impose rolling strikes for a whole year without balloting their members. Turnout requirements have been abolished so that a minority can call strikes, and the Government have removed the requirement for 50% of members to vote and 40% to support industrial action. The Bill reduces the notice for strikes by four days and gives employers less information, making strikes even more damaging to businesses and disruptive to people’s lives. It also allows unreasonable paid facility time for trade unions, making the taxpayer and companies pay out even more for trade union representatives at the same time that the Labour Government are raising everyone’s taxes and cutting public services.

[Gareth Snell]

I guess that the hon. Gentleman has never been a member of a trade union or participated in an industrial ballot. Members choose to go on strike once the ballot has finished; no one forces them to go on strike. When members give up a day’s pay to go on strike, they do so because they are fighting for improvements to their terms and conditions. He is making out as though they are somehow compelled to strike. When members turn out for a strike, they do so because of their strength of feeling about the conditions they face—nothing more.

[Mr French]

I would have some sympathy for that argument if the threshold for the percentage of workers voting for a strike was being maintained, but we are now clearly leaving the door open for a minority of militant trade union members to go on strike and cause mass disruption. I will be honest and say that I have never been a member of a trade union, but my experience of trade union bosses is that they live a life that I could never dream of as a working-class man, to be quite frank. As a working-class person from a working-class background, I learnt at a very young age that trade unions and the Labour party stopped representing working-class people many years ago, and this Government are proving it yet again.