When the Remuneration Act was introduced, the FoL held a special conference. The decision of that conference was to empower the FoL National Executive to call for nationwide action if the Act was used. Nothing was specified, but the clear intention of delegates was that if the trade union movement didn't fight this law it might as well pack up and go home.

Then the Drivers' dispute, three and a half months in the running, came to an end. Agreement was reached on a new award that would give drivers' an 11% increase, plus the 4.5% general wage order and some other concessions. Word of the proposed settlement came out before it was finally resolved, and Muldoon threatened to use the Remuneration Act if the 11 % was granted.

The Government joined with the Employers Federation in vying to produce the "definitive" set of figures that would prove that the drivers were getting between 17% and 25%. The top end of this range included overtime calculations. That really got the drivers: for one thing many drivers don't work overtime; for another, this country is supposed to operate on the principle of a 40 hour week. That principle was won 139 years ago. Wage settlements have never been calculated on an "overtime included" basis and it is patent nonsense that they should do so now. The Government and Employers Federation soon dropped that part of their calculations.

At the low end, which included all the other agreements as well as the basic award rate, the figure doesn't quite match up to the rising cost of living. Unacceptably high, said Muldoon. When journalists pointed out that MPs had received 17% themselves, he claimed the circumstances were entirely different, because MPs didn't go on strike.

With that he exposed another aspect of the attack on trade unions. Workers have only one weapon in their struggle to gain decent working standards: the right to withdraw their labour. They can't sack their bosses, they can't close down the factory and open up somewhere else, they can't import new technology to make bosses redundant and they can't hold unemployment over the bosses heads to make them accept the workers' demands. A strike is also a legitimate form of protest because no-one can have the right to force others to continue working for them regardless of the conditions of that work.