Capitalist state gives support to Walsh’s diktat!
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Capitalist state gives support to Walsh’s diktat!
THE decision by a Judge in chambers to rule the BA strike action
illegal is a major blow at the legal right to strike.
It was also a brazen attempt to rescue an employer who was determined
to act the dictator and impose new terms and conditions on BA cabin
crew.
The judge had to intervene when Walsh found that he had completely
misjudged the workforce, whose decision to take strike action for 12
days over Xmas put BA into a no win situation, where it would have to
capitulate or be broken up.
In fact, as everybody knows the objections of BA to the strike ballot
result were puerile bordering on the ridiculous.
The couple of hundred workers who had agreed redundancy but had
received ballot papers made not the slightest difference to the result
of the ballot – Ninety per cent of the 82 per cent of the workforce
who voted put their cross for strike action!
Walsh was clearly rescued by the judge. Walsh will now demand that the
union accepts the imposition of new terms and conditions of service.
The reformist instincts of the Unite leadership will be to reballot.
This will see Unite having to re-record its membership base, so that
the reballoting can take place.
Walsh will reckon that if this happens he will get away with stepping
up the impositions well into the New Year, when he will be in a much
better position to fight the union, whose leadership was already
beginning to wobble with co-leader Derek Simpson stating that 12 days
of strike action was ‘perhaps a bit over the top’.
The decision to have 12 days of strike action was the perfect well
judged response to an employer who thought that he could steamroller
over all agreements with the union, and sack and cut wages, pensions
and manning levels at will.
BA cabin crew will be furious that Walsh’s legal judicial manoeuvre
has worked and that their perfectly legal strike has been declared
illegal.
They should still take strike action and stop the airport for the 12
days.
In fact the whole of the Unite trade union and all of the TUC trade
unions should give these workers their fullest support.
If not, they will be the next victims of legal rulings that will
declare that their justified resistance to bosses and even government
imposing the most savage cuts is illegal.
All over the country, workers are being sacked, are having their wages
cut and their pensions slashed.
Their bosses tell them that since capitalism is in a crisis they will
just have to accept it.
The BA cabin crew have taken a magnificent stand against a bullying
employer whose managers declared that they were involved in a ‘fight
to the death’ with the trade union.
This kind of tactic must be stopped in its tracks at Heathrow.
Unite must continue with the action and it must be supported by the
whole of the working class to the extent of an indefinite general
strike.
If the Unite leaders are not willing to carry this action through to
the end, then why did they call a 12-day strike action over Xmas at
all.
The battle is therefore well and truly joined.
The capitalist crisis does not mean that workers have to accept being
driven into the abyss by bosses whose system has failed.
Since capitalism does not work it must be got rid of.
Trade union leaders who are not prepared to lead this struggle must be
removed and be replaced by those who will lead.
Only the WRP is building the type of revolutionary leadership that is
necessary to beat the bankers and the bosses. Join it today.
Jim A
> The News Line: Editorial Friday, 18 December 2009
[snip]
12 days of action is way over the top.
BA's customers will likely go elsewhere if this action goes ahead over
Christmas. If BA goes to the wall the jobs will go with it and who will
get blamed?