The government has shot down the CBI's demands for limits on the right to strike.
In a report christened Making Britain the Place to Work, published yesterday, the business group called for tougher rules on industrial action to be introduced.
As well as limiting the 90-day consultation period for redundancies to 30 days, the CBI said it wants to see ballots held to determine what proportion of a workforce are union members.
Deriding the ‘falling membership’ of unions, John Cridland, CBI deputy director general, said: “We also need to look at changing the rules around industrial action. Strikes cause misery. They prevent ordinary people going about their daily lives, whether it’s getting to work or getting the kids to school.
“Strikes also cost the economy dearly and undermine our efforts to help rebuild the economy. That is why we believe the bar needs to be raised, so strike action is not possible unless 40 per cent of the workforce has actively voted to withdraw its labour.”
But a spokesman for the Department for Business, mirroring similar statements from the Prime Minister David Cameron’s official spokesman, shrugged off the report, commenting: “We don’t have any plans to change our current strike legislation.”
The CBI’s lobbying comes at a time of heightened pressure from the unions to reform the country’s employment laws, following several major upsets in the courts in recent months.
Old Square Chambers’ John Hendy QC, who is set to represent the RMT union’s claims that UK union law is in breach of the European Convention of Human Rights, said: “It seems to me that this report is completely unrealistic.
“As far as I know there is no other country in the Council of Europe with legislation of this kind.
“And it is already a possibility that current legislation is in contravention of Article 11 of the convention.
“It is the employers that are relying on the courts at the moment to block strikes, not the unions.”
As calls for an emergency meeting to the Trades Union Congress (TUC) mounted, TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: “The UK already has some of the toughest legal restrictions on the right to strike in the advanced world. The courts regularly strike down democratic ballots that clearly show majority support for action. The number of days lost to industrial action is historically low and less than in many other countries.
“Any further restrictions would be extremely unfair and almost certainly breach the UK’s international human rights obligations. The new government’s commitments to civil liberties are welcome, but the CBI seems to think human rights stop at the workplace door.”
The CBI has questioned the relevance of unions in its report, claiming membership in the private sector is as low as 15 per cent in some firms.