Ed Miliband has forced wind power companies to support trade unions by threatening to cut their subsidies. The Telegraph has the story.
Dozens of businesses supplying the offshore wind industry have been pressured into adopting pro-union rules after the Energy Secretary warned he would reduce their access to taxpayer funds unless they complied.
It means the companies will be required to meet certain requirements in the Employment Rights Act months before they are rolled out nationwide, including a new right for trade unions to enter their workplaces.
They will also have to provide unions with information identifying “major contractors” across the supply chain where “reasonably practicable”, and actively engage representatives in projects that concern them.
At least 37 companies have agreed to the commitments set out in Miliband’s new Offshore Wind Fair Work Charter – after the Government threatened to block their applications for clean energy subsidies if they failed to comply.
The Tories accused Miliband of risking an increase in energy bills by “effectively forcing the offshore wind industry to accept unionisation”.
In its flagship Employment Rights Act, passed last year, Labour introduced several measures aimed at boosting the presence of trade unions in the workplace.
The new rules, which were Angela Rayner’s pet project before her resignation from the Cabinet, will include a “statutory right of access”, forcing bosses to let unions into their offices, and a duty on firms to inform workers of their right to join a union when they start a new job.
The Employment Rights Act is being implemented in stages, meaning these specific requirements are not set to come into force until October 2026.
However, Miliband has stripped offshore wind companies of their right to apply for the clean energy bonus – a green subsidy scheme – unless they sign up to his Fair Work Charter, effectively forcing them to implement the new rules early.
Worth reading in full.
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to the Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Mental Marxist
The Wind Firms get massive subsidies paid by householders/taxpayers. They’re forced to back Unions which in turn transfer huge sums of money to the Labour Party.
Nice little “protection racket” Miliband’s got going there.
And here’s the payoff to make the unions shut it about the North Sea. And like the whores they are they will.
It was the unions that destroyed the coal industry and are not offering a a squeak about the oil and gas job losses, the closing down of petrochemicals, manufacturing closing etc.
It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of grifters.
He is completely insane. Surely there is a law of non competence in public life.
im starting to get really worried now.
Sectioned under the Mental Health Act perhaps.
That’s how the government protection racket works. Want governemnt protection? Some economic assistance? No problem. But they own you.
Milliband needs them, more than they need him, if they don’t get subsidies then they don’t produce the small amount of energy which keeps Milliband in his place. So say no and threaten to close up, you watch Milliband will back down.
Great news, let’s get this ridiculous, historic form of power as unionised as the coal industry was and maybe a future Gormley or Scargill will drive it into destruction and obscurity. We can then get proper electricity generation from future technology not ancient – and no, I don’t mean land destroying solar either.
Oh look. The price of off-shore wind generated power just went up again.
Does anyone else remember the days in the eighties when private companies were allowed to flourish and state interference was on the decline? Strangely, it seemed to coincide with a period of economic growth.
That was pre-communism.
In between, I think.
It’s about the only decent thing he has done.
Trade Unions help protect the working class.
Really ?…protect the working class?
Cast your mind back to the Covid restrictions. The Trade Unions worked hand in glove with the establishment to coerce workers into complying with all the tyrranny and mandates; masks, curfews, school closures, vaccine mandates, the lot. Only the independent unions actually acted for their members.
The TUC affiliated health unions, acting as an organ of government while refusing to support the people that pay their membership dues, succeeded in losing 45,000 of the most committed workers in the Care sector in 2021
Gosh! You are out of date. Unions have not supported the working class since they sold out to Brussels and their leaders gave themselves massive pay rises.
Just 5 years ago my Trade Union supplied me with a barrister to fight my case against a large company which we eventually settled out of court with a 5 figure settlement.
Even today my future son-in-law has been provided with legal representation by his Trade Union to fight his case against an incompetent manager who is “untouchable” for being a black, middle aged, lesbian woman.
Trade Unions still have a place in todays workplace.
Unless it’s the teachers unions!
Fair enough. In your case, in the granular, personal way they do help individuals. Good for you the lad your daughter loves. And a handful of union leaders do express doubt about the some workplace where HR feminazis hunt men like vermin as
you say above. There’s that former Fire Brigades union chap who speaks a lot of sense. I’m sure there are good people in lots of places where institutions are rotten from top to bottom and whose ideological leadership has long abandoned the original and healthy purposes. I meet good and faithful Christians in the Church of England, for example, and dedicated public spirited servants of the public in local government, whose woke waters I swim in. There are good coppers who stand between the decent and the devil as proper thief-takers and peace-keepers despite all the awful DEI. But I’ve know for years that the local government union I once joined would never stand up for me if anyone in my bureaucracy made or responded to a complaint about me if there was a whiff of my politics involved. Hence my former union fees now go to to the FSU of this parish, Christian Concern and The… Read more »
Codswallop.
Trade unions also had a very big hand in the downfall of British manufacturing, especially our indigenous car industry.
My Dad was a shop steward at a car plant, and he castigated the unions for the harm they did to the UK car industry.