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Shapps lambasted following anti-union offensive

GRANT SHAPPS has “lost the plot,” RMT’s Mick Lynch charged today after the Tory Transport Secretary launched another tirade against trade union rights.

Writing in the Daily Mail newspaper, the Welwyn Hatfield MP evoked Margaret Thatcher’s assault on working-class power in the 1980s and vowed to “take on Luddite” union leaders who are “victimising” the public.

His threat came as a national strike of RMT and TSSA members at Network Rail and several train operating companies crippled services across the country.

The walkout, which is set to be replicated tomorrow after four days of similar action earlier this summer, is about declining real-terms pay and threats to cut thousands of safety-critical jobs, unions said.

But Mr Shapps, who has already introduced legislation allowing bosses to hire temporary agency workers to replace strikers, threatened to impose a 16-point plan to curb working-class bargaining power still further. 

It includes lifting the ban on ministers using emergency powers to block strikes that pose a “national emergency,” introducing minimum service level requirements during industrial action and raising the already high minimum support threshold for walkouts from 40 to 50 per cent of the eligible (rather than participating) electorate.

He wrote in the Mail: “We support the right to strike, but we must reset the balance.

“We must protect essential services and make it harder for unionists in secure, well-paid jobs to victimise other, much less fortunate workers.”

In response, Mr Lynch said that the former Tory Party chairman “is getting more and more hysterical,” saying: “You’re seeing a man who’s worried about his future.”

The transport union’s general secretary referenced the ongoing Tory leadership ballot between Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss and said Mr Shapps has to “flex his right-wing muscles in front of a parade of two really right-wing people that are going to be his boss.

“I think he’s lost the plot slightly – he needs to get back on track and enable a settlement to this dispute.”

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said that the right to strike is “a fundamental British liberty.” 

With take-home pay plummeting and inflation soaring, she told the Morning Star that the government should “get on with fixing the cost-of-living emergency, rather than making it harder for workers to win better pay and conditions." 

Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner slammed the “reckless, desperate and destructive plans from a failed Transport Secretary who is due to be put out of service.”

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