MLA Gerry Carroll tries to pass Assembly bill to roll back Margaret Thatcher’s union reforms

Last month People Before Profit’s Gerry Carroll announced that he would be bringing forward a bill to make it easier for workers to strike in an attempt to at least partially undo the seminal Conservative legislation in the 1980s which weakened the power of trade unions.

However, the pandemic and the fallout from the funeral of Bobby Storey meant that an issue which involves the sort of left-right ideological battle far rarer at Stormont than orange-green rows has received limited attention before the Assembly rose for its summer recess.

A month later, Mr Carroll said that there have been hundreds of responses to his public consultation on the proposed legislation, with another month for supporters or opponents of the bill to express their views.

The West Belfast MLA, whose election in 2016 stunned Sinn Féin in its heartland and signalled substantial discontent with the party, has proved the Assembly’s most consistent left-wing critic of Stormont orthodoxy.

However, for a solitary backbench MLA outside the big five parties to secure the passage of legislation requires persuasion, an instinctive recognition of where power lies, pragmatism and the ability to build a coalition with opponents.

But it has been done before – TUV leader Jim Allister secured the passage of legislation to ban those with serious criminal convictions from working as ministerial special advisers unless they were repentant, and Green leader Steven Agnew managed to change the law to places a statutory duty on government agencies to cooperate in the interests of children.

When asked if he had begun the process of persuading rival MLAs to vote for his bill, Mr Carroll appeared to indicate that little had yet been done on that front, with plans to discuss the issue with other parties over coming weeks.

The 33-year-old, who is his party’s sole Stormont voice, said he was “willing to discuss it with anybody or to meet anybody”

The draft Trade Union Freedom Bill has not yet been published, with only four key principles behind it set out by Mr Carroll.

They would involve changes to remove the ban on secondary action (where other unions join an industrial dispute in solidarity with workers in another sector), reducing the required notice period before a ballot for industrial action can be held, removing the legal requirement for postal/secret ballots, and simplifying the information which unions must provide in a ballot notice to the employer.

Mr Carroll said that there were “a few other ideas which other trade unionists have suggested they’d like to see in the bill” which may be incorporated.

When asked why he was proposing to remove the need for a secret ballot – as a People Before Profit press release had said – and whether such a move could make workers more vulnerable to unscrupulous employers, Mr Carroll said that he did not want to remove secret balloting as such, but the cumbersome requirement for postal voting, suggesting that online voting could replace that.

He pointed to January’s ‘New Decade, New Approach’ deal’s commitment to ensure “enhanced focus” on “protecting workers rights” and said: “If the Executive really believes that, then the Executive parties should get behind what we’re proposing in the bill.”
He said that in meetings with unions they “feel it has been more than 20 years since these laws were devolved to Stormont and they are quite shocked that nothing has been done to raise that these laws are on statute, abolish them – or at the very least amend them”.He said that the Assembly’s bill’s office and lawyers had confirmed that it was within the Assembly’s power to make the changes which he is seeking.

Mr Carroll said that he believed that the legislation could pass through the legislature despite there being just 18 months of this mandate left.

Mr Carroll told the News Letter: “I am hopeful that we can [get it through by then]. We have been told by the bill’s office that there is enough time to hopefully get this passed.

“That’s subject to political change and we know Covid and another lockdown could change that, but as far as we’re concerned there’s time to get it proposed and hopefully passed.”

• To respond to the consultation, click HERE

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