2021 will be the most important year for British trade unions in nearly a century. Following decades of neoliberal assaults on the power of unions, from the dismantling of sectoral collective bargaining, through to the introduction of employment tribunal fees and the 2016 Trade Union Act that introduced a 50% turnout requirement for strike ballots, many would have been sceptical of the ability of British unions to withstand a crisis on the scale of the coronavirus pandemic.
Since 1979, trade union membership in Britain has more than halved, with secure, unionised work largely replaced by the euphemistic ‘flexible labour market’– resulting in millions working in the ‘gig economy’ in insecure, low-waged jobs, the vast majority in the private sector. Brexit can be partly viewed as a wider Conservative project aimed at eroding the power of Britain’s trade unions, with Westminster expending a gigatonne of political capital to claw back the ability to ‘level the playing field’, in this case by tearing up as many labour rights as possible. A plan was recently leaked which threatens to abolish the 48-hour week itself and could rob workers of the right to a weekend.
In the face of these attacks, one would expect the Labour party to take up the mantle of defending workers’ rights, but Labour’s ‘New Leadership’™ are far more interested in silencing dissent from the left, which has brought them into direct conflict with several unions in recent weeks. The decision to back Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal and the inevitable assault on workers’ rights that this will entail has saddled Labour with baggage that it will take decades to deal with.
