Now for the resistance

Anyone who doubted that working people in Britain face the biggest attack on their living standards since Thatcher - and maybe even since the 1930s - will have had those doubts wiped out by last week's vicious Budget.

The Con-Dem government has decreed that workers, pensioners, children and students will pay for the financial crisis created not by them, but by the unregulated greed of bankers and parasitic speculators.

And just as Thatcher set out three decades ago to disarm the trade union movement in order to impose her swingeing cuts, so today's Tories are being egged on to hobble the unions even more by their trough-mates at the CBI.

Using the Budget deficit as pretext, the Con-Dems have effectively declared war on jobs, conditions, pay, pensions and welfare - something that comes naturally to Tories whatever the circumstances.

It is a co-ordinated attack and, when someone's winding up to give you a kicking, you have a clear choice - take them on or roll over and hope they go away.

RMT is calling on the trade union movement to start the fightback right here, right now before Cameron and Clegg have had a chance to pull their boots on.

That is why we have called for an emergency meeting of the TUC to map out a co-ordinated campaign of industrial and political action to resist - a campaign that must link up with community and progressive groups the length and breadth of Britain.

Tory axeman gunning for workers' safety

An attack on workplace health and safety is part of the Con-Dem government's attack on working people, and former Tory minister Lord Young has been handed the axe.

Young, who believes that the US coastguard may be responsible for BP's Gulf of Mexico oil spill, that emergency services should take more risks and that teachers should be free to hit children, has already made his intentions clear.

Using the usual cover of exaggerated and largely irrelevant "health-and-safety-gone-mad" and "compensation-culture" stories, Young has gone on a media offensive, claiming that health and safety is clogging up the system and declaring his intention, in the words of The Times, to "slash the number of health and safety officials."

I doubt that many of the loved ones of the 49 rail workers who have been killed in the last 15 years, the 16 oil-industry workers who died in the SuperPuma crash in the North Sea in 2009, or the 600 people who died in work-related accidents last year, would agree with him.

Young says that being beaten at school did him no harm, but I do wonder...

The law's an anti-union ass

On the day that England got through to the last 16 of the World Cup, Tubelines lost its High Court bid to have declared illegal a strike which our members voted overwhelmingly for.

As usual, the company's bid was based on claims of minor discrepancies in ballot information which would have made no difference to the outcome and which the union in any case disputes.

Our court victory, welcome as it was, was exceptional. Britain's anti-union laws are the most repressive in Europe, designed to make it as difficult as possible for working people to take industrial action to defend their interests.

And, as judges in successive cases have added their own interpretations, the noose has been pulled ever tighter.

Employers now routinely go to the courts, knowing that they can use minor technicalities to overturn democratic votes for industrial action.

RMT has seen the inside of more courtrooms than anyone could have wished.

RMT signallers were denied the right to take action when Network Rail used technicalities on the matrix of members supplied during our signallers' ballot - technicalities that again would have made no difference to the outcome.

"Matrix discrepancies" remain the most common challenge, but the NR challenge also saw the dangerous development of the use of arguments about the "proportionality" of proposed action. That opened up a disturbing new avenue of challenges based on subjective views about what is proportionate in a dispute and what is not.

Trade unionists have long argued that Britain's anti-union laws are a denial of human rights, and that is why RMT has challenged them in the European Court of Human Rights.

We argue that our right to organise industrial action is restricted by British law, in breach of Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

We are challenging the legality of requiring unions to give employers notice which must fulfil onerous conditions such as providing job descriptions of the intended voters, as well as the ban on organising solidarity industrial action even where the secondary employer is closely associated with the employer in dispute.

No court case is any substitute for workers organising to defend their interests, but we are in no doubt the fundamental human right to withdraw labour has been systematically undermined, and the outcome of this case will have implications for the entire movement.

Why do bosses hate state subsidies?

I have always found that bosses hate the idea of state subsidies - unless of course they are on the receiving end.

Brian Souter, the Stagecoach transport privateer, has expressed concern that bus and rail services shouldn't suffer as the result of the Con-Dems' attack on public services.

You'd been forgiven for thinking Souter's concern was driven by the fact that he and Stagecoach's shareholders have benefited from the conversion of hundreds of millions of taxpayers' pounds into profits and dividends.

The breathtaking fact is that private rail franchises have received more than £11 billion in subsidies since 2001 - and no-one knows how much they squeeze from local authorities to bolster their bus profits, because no-one keeps a central tally.

Only a couple of weeks ago Stagecoach boasted that it was profitable thanks to the subsidies its rail subsidiaries receive, at least £70 million for its rail interests alone this year.

As a responsible union that believes in the efficient delivery of public services we have long argued that the likes of Stagecoach and all the other transport parasites should be removed from the equation so that public subsidy supports services and green jobs rather than providing income-support for wealthy shareholders.

Seafarer review offers hope

A glint of good news for Britain's seafarers is an independent recommendation that ship-owners should no longer be allowed to ignore the Race Relations Act.

We have campaigned for more than 30 years to end the shameful exemption that allows UK ship-owners to discriminate on pay and conditions.

The last government took some painfully slow steps in the right direction and commissioned an external review of evidence submitted to its consultation - although it failed to find the parliamentary time to introduce new regulations following the passage of the Equality Bill.

However, former civil servant Susan Carter's review has recommended, quite baldly, "On the basis of the evidence submitted, I recommend outlawing the practice of nationality-based pay differentials for seafarers altogether."

The report makes clear that RMT evidence, supported by the Trades Union Congress and Scottish Trades Union Congress, was instrumental in reaching that conclusion - and the RMT parliamentary group also helped to push the issue to the extent that it could no longer be ignored.

The Chamber of Shipping is apoplectic, warning of the imminent collapse of the shipping industry if they are forced to obey laws that every other industry has had to observe for more than three decades. It is lobbying intensely.

The new government has invited further comment on the review.

Our position remains that employers should not be able to reduce the Red Ensign to a flag of convenience, and we will continue to press for decent minimum standards, including the minimum wage, for seafarers, both on British-flagged vessels and on those of other flags working in UK waters.