Controversial reforms to tighten rules on strike action have been met with howls of protest in the Commons as new Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn looked on from the front bench.
Sajid Javid moved the second reading of the Trade Union Bill and insisted the Government was not trying to ban or restrict strikes but to ensure ballots are fair and reasonable.
The legislation creates minimum turnout thresholds for strike ballots to carry and in public services requires at least 40% of eligible union members to back a strike.
Mr Corbyn sat silently behind the Labour Despatch Box during the initial exchanges, next to his new shadow business secretary Angela Eagle and close to shadow chancellor John McDonnell.
Opposition backbenchers bombarded the Business Secretary with repeated interventions and angry shouts.
But Mr Javid told MPs: "(Unions) have helped deliver a fairer society. They helped deliver higher wages, safer work places, stronger employee rights.
"They have fought for social justice, they have campaigned for freedom and democracy and they have supplied this House with some of its most eloquent, influential members including Leaders of the Opposition.
"Unions helped my father when he first worked on the cotton mills and they helped him again when a whites-only policy threatened to block him from becoming a bus driver.
"And just as the workplace has evolved over that time, so have the trade unions and the laws that govern them. In 2015, no one would argue for the return of the closed shop, I hope. The show of hands vote in a dimly lit car park or the wildcat walkout enforced by a handful of heavies."
He added: "Now it is time for Britain's unions to take that next step and this Bill will help do just that."
Green MP Caroline Lucas (Brighton Pavilion) said the Bill was a "vindictive attack", prompting Mr Javid to add: "This Bill is not a declaration of war on the trade union movement - it is not an attempt to ban industrial action, it is not an attack on the rights of working people.
"It is not a reprise of prime minister Clement Attlee sending in troops to break up perfectly legal stoppages. It is simply the latest stage in the long journey of modernisation and reform."
But Labour veteran Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) insisted: "If this Bill was supported by the workers generally, we would have found already that there would have been some trade unions that would have given it support.
"This Bill is opposed by all the unions affiliated to the Labour movement, it's opposed by all those that are not affiliated to the Labour movement, and even the Royal College of Nursing has said no to this Bill. It's a travesty and it's an intrusion upon the democracy of the workplace.
"Get rid of it."
Mr Javid defended reforms forcing union members to opt in to paying into political funds, rather than opting out, a move bound to hit Labour Party funding.
Amid an onslaught of opposition from Labour MPs, Mr Javid said it was about ensuring union members are giving money to political parties with their "eyes wide open" and that Northern Ireland operates under a similar system.
Mr Javid said: "That money belongs to hard working people and they should know exactly what is being done with it and that is at the heart of this proposal.
"All we are asking is for a simple tick-box on the same membership forms in England, Scotland and Wales."
He added: "This is rightly an issue about transparency, it's about making sure that when people do rightly give money to any political party, that they know that they are doing that and they are doing it with their eyes wide open."
Mr Javid was also forced to defend plans to end the so-called check-off system of collecting union subscriptions directly from members' salaries, with workers switching to direct debit.
Labour former cabinet minister Alan Johnson asked why the Government was introducing such a system for unions while simultaneously automatically taking pensions contributions from wage packets.
He said: "Perhaps you can explain why the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is pursuing auto-enrolment in terms of contributions to pension funds?"
But Mr Javid said workers are capable of paying their union subscriptions themselves through direct debit.
He said: "To suggest otherwise is to say that Britain's union members are too lazy to set up a direct debit or they're too stupid to make a decision about politics - this is patronising in the extreme."
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