Should the right to strike be curbed?

YES...

A BAN on strike action in essential public services is necessary and justified, particularly in relation to the railways.

The travelling public is inconvenienced enough by using public transport without contending with strikes. I don't think passengers should be used as political footballs or that there is a place for strike action in modern Britain.

I don't see why strike action is necessary. Employees do not need to withdraw their labour to have negotiating clout with their employers.

The police do not have any less influence over their pay and conditions yet they do not strike.

In small businesses, strikes are rare as employers and employees tend to talk to each other.

It is primarily in the older industries, where industrial relation practises are entrenched, that strikes are still used by employees.

In more modern-looking businesses, employers and employees work together more constructively.

Unions and management should talk more, if necessary with the use of an independent arbitrator like ACAS.

The reduction of strikes in the 1980s and 1990s demonstrated that employers and employees can resolve their differences by dialogue.

The absurd thing is that management and union always resolve their differences after a strike has finished. Normally after considerable cost and extensive inconvenience to the public. The public should not suffer due to the failings or intransigence of Unions or management.

Britain must not return to the strike- bound days of the 1970s, when the country was paralysed by union militancy.

We used to be known as the "sick man of Europe". Nowadays in an even more competitive world, it would be economically disastrous for strikes to become commonplace. Investors would ignore Britain and take their jobs elsewhere.

Nobody would contemplate the Accident and Emergency Unit being closed at York District Hospital. It is too essential a service. Railways should be treated similarly and other key services.

We need reliable public services in this country without the constant threat of industrial action. Public services should be available at all times.

Unless the Government takes a lead and bans strike action in our public services or unless the unions recognise that strike action is not a legitimate tool to achieve industrial redress, I fear we will continue to see a deterioration in our public services.

Unions should recognise that public sympathy for the use of strike action has been exhausted.

We have been promised modern services and we expect modern unions to play their part in supplying them.

NO...

The right to strike is fundamental in any democratic society and for it to be curbed would be an infringement of civil liberties.

For really essential services such as the armed forces or the police you can see the argument, because it becomes a matter of public safety. But services such as the railways aren't in that ball game, and the right to strike must be protected.

If there were no such right, we would end up living in a kind of corporate society, where big businesses and corporations ran everything.

That is not in the interests of ordinary people.

Nobody takes going on strike lightly. It is not something anybody wants to do, and certainly not our members in the rail industry.

We are talking about average Joes, people who just want to provide for their families.

They are not militant people at all, there hasn't been a strike for a long time. These are people who take pride in the service they provide. And let's remember, nobody pays them when they go on strike.

But if you have gone through all the negotiations without success - and we have been talking now for month after month after month - you have no alternative. And provided it is used as a last resort, there has to be a basic right to withdraw labour.

Six hundred people cannot just leave and join another company overnight, so sometimes strike action is the only way they can show their dissatisfaction. Our members are on strike because the company (Arriva) has given a huge pay rise to a part of the workforce and a minuscule rise in comparison to other members of the workforce.

These are not professionals on £40,000 or £50,000 a year, they are very very poorly paid people.

Of course there differences in point of view. The company's aim is to make profits. Ours is to get the best that we can for our members.

If we can reach agreement through talking and through negotiation, so much the better. But if as a last resort our members want to go out on strike to make their feelings plain, they must have the right to do so.

Not to be able to do so would mean that the balance of power in the workplace was shifted completely in favour of the employer and away from ordinary working people.

And that would not be democratic.

Updated: 11:09 Wednesday, February 06, 2002