Author Archives: Dominic Mantle

Dominic Mantle

Opinion: Cable’s GMB speech encapsulated coalition tensions

By Dominic Mantle | Sun 19th June 2011 - 7:56 pm

The Business Secretary Vince Cable’s speech to the GMB annual conference last Monday received significant attention. Some media coverage would have us believe that the senior Lib Dem had brazenly threatened trades unions with serious curbs on their strike powers. In fact, Cable had qualified his brief hint of this possibility with the admission that present circumstances merited no government action.

Within the context of unions’ criticism of government cuts to jobs and services, Cable’s introduction to the table of the possibility of changes to strike law may have been a strategic manoeuvre intended to dissuade industrial action planned …

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