Team Blitz India
LONDON: The opposition Labour Party has vowed to repeal recentlyintroduced legislation that curbs workers’ rights to strike if it wins the next election.
Party’s deputy leader Angela Rayner has promised to reverse the Strikes (Minimum Service levels) Act within 100 days of taking power. This is seen as wooing the party’s traditional support base of trade unions and workers.
The Conservative government had passed a bill in July which it says balances the right to strike with the need for the public to have access to services after severe disruption from industrial action over the past year.
According to the Act, striking workers in key sectors such as the rail, ambulance and fire services are required to provide minimum levels of service during any industrial action. Rayner said the new legislation was a “spiteful and bitter attack” on trade unions.
“The next Labour Government will ask Parliament to repeal these anti-trade union laws within our first 100 days,” she said in a speech at the Trades Union Congress (TUC) annual conference in Liverpool.
She said that the party would also bring forward an Employment Rights Bill in its first 100 days in office. Such a bill will legislate for fairer pay, strengthen rights and protections for workers and bolster trade unions’ rights, she said.
