Industrial Action - A political issue for 2006?

Thousands of trade unionists and supporters will take to the streets of London in support of improved working rights and a Trade Union Freedom Bill

This increasing pressure on the Government to support a Trade Union Freedom Bill making changes to the laws on industrial action, which is being spearheaded by the TUC, is going to put the relationship between Labour and the Trade Unions to the test.

The rights of the Unions to call for industrial action and of employees to participate in such action were brought into focus by last Summerís Gate Gourmet affair. The issues were debated at the TUCís Autumn Congress and the result is the TUCís recently published proposal for a Trade Union Freedom Bill.

Included are calls for supportive (or secondary) action to be permitted where the intervention of a customer or supplier has caused or contributed to the issue which is the subject of the primary trade dispute;

supportive action to be permitted against a company to which work is outsourced in connection with an industrial dispute;

the right to take industrial action where, in the context of a business transfer (such as outsourcing situations), there is a dispute with a future employer about employment terms;

employers to be prohibited from hiring agency workers to do the work of striking workers. The current restriction simply prohibits employment agencies from supplying agency workers to do such work and those agencies are able to plead a defence of ignorance; and

improved protection from dismissal for workers taking part in official industrial action. The TUC is proposing that all strike related dismissals should be void, regardless of the length of the strike action.

Mark Leach, an expert in the field of industrial relations at DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary (DLA Piper), comments: If the TUCís proposals for a Trade Union Freedom Bill become law, even more employers are going to face the difficult prospect of industrial action disrupting the effective operation of their business. The TUCís argument in favour of limited secondary action is that it will enable the law to be modernised in line with the changes that workforces have experienced in recent years, particularly with the increased use of outsourcing and other external contractor arrangements.

The proposed changes would, for example, have allowed British Airways staff to take industrial action in support of the Gate Gourmet dispute although the wildcat action that was staged last summer would have remained unlawful even under these proposed reforms. It will be interesting to see how the Government, faced with the pressure of this TUC campaign, balances its competing loyalties to the Unions and to British business.