RMT boss Mick Lynch calls for 'return to 1970s' as he demands unions in 'every workplace'
24 September 2024, 05:40 | Updated: 24 September 2024, 05:41
RMT boss Mick Lynch has said the problem with the UK’s economy is that unions do not have enough power.
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The fiery rail union leader called for “the complete organisation of the UK economy by trade unions” as he slammed Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.
This comes after the party clashed with its union backers, with members forcing a vote on reversing plans to axe winter fuel payments for 10 million pensioners.
Speaking with alarm employers yesterday, the RMT boss demanded the expansion of union powers.
Mr Lynch said: “The problem at the moment is that the unions are not in every sector, effectively.
“We’re not in every workplace. We’re not able to influence non-union recognised workplaces, whereas up to the 1970s and 80s, we were.
“So if you went on a job as a construction worker that wasn’t organised, you tended to get the union agreement anyway, because it was enforceable by those workers.”
He continued: “And that’s the prize we’ve got to keep our eyes on – that union influence is universal across the United Kingdom, completely universal.
“The complete organisation of the UK economy by trade unions – that’s our aim.”
Mr Lynch added: “We never step back from organising workers and we won’t do so under a Labour Government, no matter how diluted this Act may become.”
Despite his criticism of the Labour Party, Lynch told an event in Liverpool Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and Transport Secretary Louise Haigh are ‘leading individuals’ who must be ‘supported by the [union] movement.”
Responding to these comments, one leading Tory accused Labour of being “prisoners to the unions.”
Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said: “At the end of the day, the unions are Labour’s paymasters.
“They will end up capitulating again and again as they always have done.
“What we now know is that Keir Starmer’s government is going to look a lot more like Harold Wilson’s than Tony Blair’s. Wilson was a prisoner to the unions.”
