SCORES of union activists told journalists the same thing when asked why they were lobbying their MPs yesterday — to defend their right to strike.

But Sarah Rigby doesn’t have a right to strike to speak of, and if there’s one thing she’s sure of, it’s that this has left her among the most vulnerable to Tory austerity.

Successive governments have placed heavy restrictions on prison officers like Sarah, who works at HMP Lancaster Farms.

“It limits what we can do,” she told the Star. And she said she would have “definitely” been driven to strike action by recent pressures on prison officers that have resulted from public-sector cuts.

“It feels like we’re being walked over by the government,” she adds.

“We’ve had rising violence and a massive increase in [prisoner] numbers.”

Workers fear the punitive restrictions in the Bill will only encourage bosses to throw their weight around.

Candy Udwin, who was sacked by the National Gallery and only reinstated after a year of strikes, would probably still be facing the dole queue if the government’s proposals were already law.

“We showed that strikes work,” Ms Udwin said. “So many things that we did would be illegal under the Bill, from the protests to what we organised on the picket lines, to what we put on Facebook.

“But we also showed that if you link the most militant action with political campaigning you can win.

“So there’s a message of hope, not just in stopping the Bill but in making it unworkable if they try to use it against us.”
conradlandin@peoples-press.com