The strike "wave", which started last summer isn't entirely over. Train drivers in ASLEF and junior doctors are still officially on strike. And the government's latest anti-working class measure, the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 might well be put to the test against them: doctors have already set new strike dates - from 20 Dec to 23 Dec and 3 Jan to the 9 Jan. However, as they point out, they're already unable to provide a minimum service at the best of times...
While the government wants to be seen to be acting against strikers and unions, in fact it already had plenty of legal weapons to use against them, dating back to the Thatcher era or even before.
But this new law, by setting minimum service levels, directly attacks the strategy of the union bureaucracies today - which is to try to get maximum effect, but with minimum effort and strictly within the narrow sectional boundaries of their own unions... Heaven forbid that they should combine for collective action for as long as it takes and thus scupper all legal restrictions!
The TUC had a special conference at the weekend to decide what to do about the new law. Unite's Sharon Graham, calls it "one of the greatest ever attacks" on trade unions. It's her usual OTT hyperbole. What about the law banning solidarity strikes in 1992, or the power to confiscate union funds and imprison union leaders for unofficial action? In fact, despite many wildcat strikes since then, these powers were never used! The government can't forget the Pentonville 5 - when it imprisoned dockers' leaders in 1972, provoking a near-uprising!
Today's Strikes Act means that workers who don't comply with a "work notice" can be sacked, and that unions can be taken to court for damages if they don't make sure members obey. The TUC annual conference had already committed to organising mass opposition, non-compliance and strikes, to make the law "unworkable". Sharon Graham wrote in the Guardian: "Unions must resist the Tories' new anti-strike laws - even if that means breaking the law ourselves". She said unions had "a mandate to work together"...
But do they dare "work together"? Not on their Nellie! They've timidly offered to "back" any individual worker threatened with the sack for not complying. Yes, they'll find a lawyer and organise a protest! Oh, and a demonstration is to be held on 27 January in Cheltenham!
Of course this law must be defied - through united, across-all-sections, general action. That means defying the 1992 law which says we can't strike in sympathy with fellow workers - which union leaders were never prepared to do. It will have to be done without them.