Tory MPs vote to introduce Scabs Charter!

On Monday night, MP's voted by 289 votes to 202, to allow the use of agency worker's as strikebreakers to replace striking worker's during an industrial dispute. The move has been denounced as a scabs charter that will allow bosses to employ 'blackleg' labour to break strikes. 

The use of agency worker's as strikebreakers, was first outlawed in 1973.  Regulation 7 of the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Business Regulations 2003, prohibited employers from using agency worker's to cover an employee who is taking part in a strike or industrial action. Britain, already has some some of strictest anti-union laws in the advanced capitalist world. Many of these laws that were introduced under the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher, were never repealed by a Labour government. 

Within Europe, Brexit Britain is one of the easiest countries in which to sack worker's. In March, P&O Ferries sacked nearly 800 staff without warning who were then replaced by staff working for less money. The RMT union who represented many of them, said that worker's from India, had been recruited by P&O who were paying them as little as £1.80 an hour. Many of the replacement staff had no seafaring experience. 

Although P&O sacked almost a quarter of its British staff, regional media in France - where it is more difficult to sack worker's and where worker's are more militant - reported that no French P&O employees had been affected. That was also the case in Holland, where P&O gave Dutch staff a 5% pay rise, weeks after sacking British seafarers. 

Despite breaking the law by not giving ministers the legally mandated 45-days notice of intent, a spokesman for the Nautilus Union, which represented around a third of sacked staff, said: "P&O has gotten away with it. There's no fine, there's no legal action, there's only words and hot air."

If a company like P&O, which is owned by the Dubai-based 'DP World', can treat British worker's with such contempt, it's because they can get away with it in a country where worker's have very little legal protection against such practices as fire and rehire and where bosses can deliberately flout employment law with obvious impunity. 

The ending of the ban on using agency worker's as strikebreakers, will now make it more easy for bosses to break strikes. This is why the government have introduced it and why the deliberately ignore calls to ban the practice of fire and rehire which is illegal in Ireland, Spain, and France.