#uNDC16 Scottish NEC member, Jane Carolan paid tribute to the magnificent efforts by this Trade Union to lobby on the Trade Union Act to achieve change as conference backed a wide ranging strategy to improve workplace organisation and political campaigning across the four nations.
However she warned that this legislation still enshrines a fundamental attack on trade unions and working people’s right to organise in the workplace and withdraw their labour and
Moving an NEC motion Jane reminded delegates that our history as a trade union movement is a history of struggle.
“We are organised, we have the right to strike, because there were brave men and women prepared to give everything to win those rights.
“From the beginning of our movement we saw those who were prepared for execution or transportation as a price worth paying. Or who were prepared to accept long terms of imprisonment in order to found organisations to defend the rights of workers.
“In more recent times we remember the Shrewsbury pickets, the miners’ strikes, the Greenwich workers. So we are used to the idea that if we want to maintain our rights to organise in our workplaces, to have the right to withdraw our labour then we have to fight to maintain it. That is the context in which we have to place the events of this spring” said Jane.
She slammed the plans in the original bill to end DOCAS and attack facility time as a direct attack on this trade union and a direct threat to democracy, adding that if we want to maintain our organisation at this time we need to defend facility time and check off arrangements
“We need new industrial tactics based on members’ participation, workplace organisation and stewards. We need to continue to oppose this oppressing legislation and prepare for its repeal,” said Jane, calling on the union to work with the Institute of Employment Rights to develop and promote a positive agenda for a future government.
“It’s time not for sloganising but for organising,” she urged.