"
The Home Office has almost given up pretending that its ID scheme is necessary for national security. Those involved in aviation security day-to-day don't believe it. Now the plan is that ID will confront us in the workplace - as a form of official permission to earn a living. We are delighted that the unions and their members will be ready to fight it."
As I said in another post..At the meeting with the Home office, they actually stressed that the requirement for us to have the ID had nothing to do with Anti-Terrorism. In fact that was the only time it was mentioned in the entire meeting. We did go expecting them to bang on about security and were surprised that they took this path. As it says above, they seem to have given up on that one. That is not to say that Government is not still saying that, they don't know how to change the mantra in the face of defeat.
The motion puts unions on a collision course with the government over
civil liberties and contradicts government spin that "unions approve ID
cards" issued after the Labour Party National Policy Forum at Warwick at
the end of July.
The vote at the TUC congress was from the collective delegates. It would be wrong to assume that some of the National Officers at Warwick were giving any indication that they were against ID cards.
The GMB delegate seemed to have lost the plot at congress and had no idea what the arguments were. Thankfully BALPA used the right of reply and more or less said that. I do still think that the arguments that BALPA put over were not necessarily the best I've heard, but, at least they stood up to be counted and the outcome was positive. (I am not a member of BALPA)