AT THE centre of the green paper, Trade the individual to choose to go to work despite a call to take industrial action'.
Every union member' the paper goes on 'should be free to decide for himself (sic) whether or not he wishes to break his contract of employment and run the risk of dismissal without com pensation. No union member should be penalised by his trade union for exercising his right to cross a picket line and go to work'.
The green paper proposes that this so-called right to cross picket lines' be enshrined in law: Unions would be unable to take any discipline against members who scabbed during a dispute. Individual members would have the legal right to seek compensation against unions:
Potential scabs would be given legal redress even before the union took action. Under the 1984 Trade Union Act, unions lose their immunity from civil action unless they ballot their members over strike action. What the green paper proposes is that union members would now be given the right to prevent their unions taking industrial action if a ballot has not taken place As Financial Times labour editor, Philip Bassett commented on 25 February, this is the 'key issue on which many of the legal actions brought by union members in the 1984-5 miners strike rested'.
The green paper is peppered with references to the NUM. The CBI described the green paper as 'clearly' aimed at action such as that in the 1984-5 miners strike. It underscores how the government and the employers are determined to try to exorcise from the labour movement's memory the lessons ot that strike and to prevent similar action in the lulure.
A specific set of proposals — to stipulate that the election president. general secretaries must be held by secret postal ballots -is explicitly aimed at Arthur Scargill. Workplace ballots, or pithead ballots in the case of the NÙM, are opposed by the green paper, despite their legal imposition having been enacted by a previous peice of Tory government legislation.
The green paper also proposes controls on union trustees, referring to the NUM leadership's taking the union's money out of the country to The principle of 'scabs' rights' is also applied targetted by earlier Tory anti-union laws in 1980 government attacks combined with the closure of branches of industry where the closed shop was more prevalent has cut the number of workers covered by closed shop agreements from its high point of 5.2 million in the mid '70s to about 3 Now the government intends to go a huge step further: to legally protect individuals who refuse to join a union even where closed shop agreement Last month a sit-down strike in the Stockport engineering firm of Simon Engineering needed just one-hour to ensure the removal of a 'man with a who lett the union. Under the pro posals specified in the green paper, the industrial action would have been illegal and the individual Just in case aspiring scabs don't feel sufficiently self-confident to proceed with legal action, or in case they haven't securred financial backing from as the misnamed 'Freedom Associaltion', the green paper has a "The time has come' it states 'to consider the need for a public authority to play a role in observance of the law'. The proposed 'public authority' would be a new commissioner who would have a statutory duty to support complaints, underwriting the plaintiff's legal costs. The commissioner could also act in his or her own right.
If the new proposals are a 'scabs charter and Labour Party leadership is a clear commit. ment of support for any unions that come under the legal hammer and a pledge to take the unions out of the hands of the courts and to return them now faces a veritable legal minefield constraining effective action, summarised by Eric Heffer as a