Paddy Lillis – Usdaw General Secretary says: “This weekend the labour and trade union movement is coming together to celebrate our history and protest against the current Tory Government's determination to undermine workers rights. We have won before and we will win again, as we seek to protect the right to strike.
 
“We are campaigning together to make the case against the Government’s minimum service levels legislation. Whatever the Government might say, we know that these laws have not been introduced to protect public services. We know that these laws have been introduced to attack trade unions. Creating unworkable, draconian and entirely unnecessary red tape, to weaken us, to damage us and to undermine our members’ fundamental rights.
 
“While we will continue to fight for them to be repealed, we have a very welcome and solid commitment from the Labour Party to do just that, in the meantime, we can expect the Government to use these laws to attack our members and our movement. This weekend, and every day, the entire trade union movement will stand together to protect the right to strike for all workers and against this unnecessary, vindictive, unworkable legislation.”
 
Notes for editors:
 
Usdaw (Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers) is one of the fastest growing unions in the TUC and the UK's fifth biggest trade union with around 360,000 members. Most Usdaw members work in the retail sector, but the union also has many members in transport, distribution, food manufacturing, chemical industry and other trades www.usdaw.org.uk
 
For Usdaw press releases visit: http://www.usdaw.org.uk/news and you can follow us on Twitter @UsdawUnion