Organising to beat the Trade Union Act 2016
Project Background
The laws surrounding industrial action in the UK are perhaps the strictest in the Western world. In 2017, the Trade Union Act 2016 became law with a key part of such legislation requiring a minimum 50% turnout in statutory ballots, a strategy to reduce further record low levels of strike activity, but more importantly, hampering the bargaining powers of trade unions seeking to resist austerity measures put in place by UK governments post-2010, and more generally creating a further downward pressure on terms and conditions of millions of UK employers. The aim of the project is to devise and put into action a get the vote out (GTVO) model for organising to the beat the Trade Union Act 2016. A further aim is to build an impact case based on trade unions using the GTVO model to successfully achieve the requirements of the Trade Union Act 2016 and subsequently, e.g. defend jobs, increase bargaining power in industrial disputes.
Research Questions
The project is based on answering the following research questions:
- What is best practice in developing a GTVO organising model in relation to statutory ballots?
- How can best practice be best illustrated and communicated to trade union organisers?
- How can the model be developed/varied to suit a range of organising context and size of bargaining units?