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15
June 2010
view
the shortened letter printed on Friday 21st May at guardian.co.uk
Dear Sir,
Nick Clegg calls for
nominations for laws to be repealed, as part of a "power
revolution"
Anti-trade union laws
should be high on his list.
Successive UK governments
have been called on by international human rights bodies,
such as the Council of Europe and the International Labour
Organisation, to bring UK law at least up to the basic level
required by various conventions the UK has ratified. (Conventions
ratified by every other country in Europe, including those
not in the EU, in the case of the European Convention on Human
Rights).
In March the ILO Committee
of Experts reiterated its view saying : "the Committee
requests the [UK] Government to review the [law] and consider
appropriate measures for the protection of workers and their
organizations to engage in industrial action and to indicate
the steps taken in this regard."
Even the Canadian Supreme
Court has adjudged that the exercise of collective rights
"reaffirms the values of dignity, personal autonomy,
equality and democracy". It follows that the absence
of effective rights in the UK diminishes those values.
Although BA’s injunction
against Unite’s ballot fell, because the Court of Appeal
accepted that the requirement to give notice of 11 spoilt
ballot papers in the context of a ballot of some 12,500 entitled
to vote was trivial in the extreme, UK law fails to reach
the required standards.
We would be happy to explain
to the Deputy Prime Minister the minimum that would be required
for the UK to comply with just the basic international legal
threshold.
Now is his chance.
Yours sincerely,
John Usher
Director
United Campaign to Repeal the Anti-Trade Union Laws
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