Today, as unions stepped up their threats of “coordinated” action, Keir Starmer stumbled when asked if he supported strikes that are impairing Britain.
The Labour leader said wage increases should take into consideration cost-of-living concerns and that he can “completely understand” why there is industrial unrest.
He avoided answering the question of whether he agreed with certain strikes, such as one in which train employees shut down the transportation network.
He countered by saying that “ushering in a Labour government” is his main goal.
In the meanwhile, if Labour is elected to power, his deputy Angela Rayner has vowed to defend the right to strike “as long as I have a breath in my body” and abolish “anti-worker and anti-trade union policies.”
The government’s promise to modify the law to reduce the harm they are creating was denounced by union leaders, who also said they would join together to increase the impact.
On October 1, October 5, and October 8, additional train strikes are anticipated, adding to the misery for travelers.
When asked if he would support workers going on strike in the event that they did not receive wage increases that were in pace with inflation, Sir Keir responded, “When people go on strike, it is a last resort at the end of discussions.”
I completely see why people would be motivated to do that; they are having a hard time making ends meet, the negotiations have failed, and as a last choice, they have decided to go on strike.
“And I support trade unions performing the work that they are doing in representing their members. I also support the right of individuals to strike.”
Like every other striker, I want to see the strikes ended.
Frontbenchers are prohibited by Sir Keir from participating in picket lines, and Sam Tarry was fired from his position as shadow transport minister in July for speaking to the media without permission while at an RMT protest.
Sir Keir was shown footage of dockers striking nearby in Liverpool during the presentation, and they advised him to express “solidarity” with workers.
When questioned about why he wasn’t supporting them, he responded that leading the Labour Party is “not the same job as the leader of a trade union.”
My responsibility is to see that the Labour Party moves from opposition, where we can only speak out against policies, to power, where we can really implement them, he said.
He declared that Labour’s ties to the labor movement are “solid” and will last “far into the future.”
The general secretary of the Unison union, Christina McAnea, justified Labour’s position on strikes by asserting that the party is there “to work with us.”
She told Sky News’ Ridge on Sunday, “Labour is there to, ideally, work with us, and I think if there’s a Labour administration in place, I would hope that we wouldn’t be set to ballot 400,000 NHS workers by the end of this year.”
“I’d like to think that they’d talk to us,”
Although she emphasized that there is a legal gap between that and a “universal strike,” Ms. McAnea stated that “we are certainly moving close to a coordinated strike.”
“We talk to each other, it would be silly for unions not to coordinate their forces, so we are taking action alongside the postal workers next week, alongside the ASLEF union, and if other people want to join in a wave of response and resistance to what’s going on, where the rich are being made richer all the time, and we’ve seen that in the budget on Friday, where everyone who is under £155,000 in salary will be poorer and everybo”
According to Mr. Lynch, he had a “nice meeting with a constructive attitude” during his first encounter with the new transport secretary, Anne-Marie Trevelyan.
Mr. Lynch, though, criticized the government, calling the tightening of the regulations governing strikes “an affront on civil freedoms and human rights.”
Following the announcement of plans to pass legislation requiring trade unions to submit compensation offers from employers to a vote of their members, Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng put himself on a collision course with trade unions.
He cited the minimal service standards that European nations had in place to prevent “militant trade unions” from shutting down transportation systems.
Trade unions in the UK would be unable to exist, according to Mr. Lynch.
They are an attack on civil liberties and human rights, he continued, therefore they are not merely strike laws.
They have so attempted to make it hard for trade unions to exist in this nation and, in reality, for the people of this nation to fight poverty, which is what many of them were attempting to do.
“People will have to go in other ways, they will have to think of other means of accomplishing it,” the quote reads. “If there is no trade union freedom, and it is hard to conduct rules and industrial action.”