THE Conservative government has come out of the general election on the offensive, savaging public services and pay.

Having last week announced a Budget that takes money from the poorest in society and attacks the life chances of young people, the government published a Trade Union Bill yesterday with the unambiguous aim of preventing the labour movement fighting back against its vicious cuts programme. The government aims to make it illegal for trade unionists to effectively defend jobs, pay and public services. 

The need to fight back — and fight back effectively — couldn’t be greater. 

The Trade Union Bill is being proposed at the same time as Chancellor George Osborne turns the screw harder on people’s incomes, holding down public-sector pay and cutting tax credits, driving more people into poverty. 

As wages and welfare are forced down, the Conservative government expects growing demands for industrial action from within our trade unions and so is trying to shut down our movement before momentum builds. 

But we will need to be organised. The terms of the Trade Union Bill go beyond what many had expected and show the determination of the Conservative government to assert its power. 

If and when the Bill becomes law, all industrial action will be illegal unless there is a turnout of more than 50 per cent. But it doesn’t stop there. In sectors including health services, education of those under 17 years of age, fire services and transport, even a 50-per-cent turnout won’t be enough: 40 per cent of all those eligible to vote will also have had to have voted in favour of industrial action. 

To put it into perspective, this would mean that teaching assistants striking against pay cuts or redundancies would be striking illegally unless they had at least an 80 per cent vote in favour of the action on a 50 per cent turnout. 

But of course, the Trade Union Bill deliberately ignores common-sense proposals from trade unions for modernising balloting methods to increase the number of members who end up using their right to vote. What opposition could a reasonable government have to secure online balloting of trade union members?

Under the Bill, the notice that trade unions have to give to employers before taking industrial action will be doubled. There are also onerous new requirements for repeat balloting.

Other measures cooked up by David Cameron and his cronies include measures to further restrict already restricted peaceful picketing.

A government that dances to the tune of bankers and big business is also using this Bill to prevent trade unions from taking part in political activity — whether related to a political party or not. 

All of this amounts to an outrageous and authoritarian attack on democracy and the rights of working people.

But no-one should believe that the government’s attack on pay and workers’ rights will stop here. Cameron is plotting to use his negotiations with the EU to rob workers in Britain of the protections of the Working Time Directive and the Agency Workers Directive. 

With the Trade Union Bill now “out there,” the fight is on. It’s now necessary for the trade union movement to mobilise our membership and build an alliance to defeat these draconian proposals and the ruthless cuts agenda that drives them. Trade unions must combine with the student movement and the charity sector and the anti-cuts movement — and ensure that the Labour Party nationally takes on the fight in Parliament.

Be under no illusion: the Trade Union Bill proposals go beyond anything ever attempted by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. Thirty years on from the end of the heroic 1984-5 miners’ strike, the Conservative government is setting about “finishing the job” of finally crushing the trade union movement. But as a movement, we have unfinished business too — the unfinished business of casting the “hire and fire,” low pay, non-unionised zero-hours, zero-rights and zero-security model of an employment market into the dustbin of history. That’s where it belongs. 

A Labour MP and a trade union official have joined forces to write this article for our favourite paper. The whole Labour Party and trade union movement need to join forces to fight back against this government — no “ifs,” no “buts,” no apologies and no holding back. 

• Richard Burgon is Labour MP for Leeds East and Tim Roache is GMB regional secretary for Yorkshire and North Derbyshire region.