Statutory Interpretation and the Limits of a Human Rights Approach: Royal Mail Group Ltd v Communication Workers Union

Abstract

In the 1998 white paper Fairness at Work, the recently elected New Labour Government famously declared that when it came to trade union law there would be no going back: the days of strikes without ballots, mass picketing, closed shops and secondary action were over and the intention was to retain the ‘most lightly regulated labour market of any leading economy in the world’.1 In the same year, the Human Rights Act was passed, giving direct vertical and indirect horizontal effect in UK law to the European Convention on Human Rights (the Convention; ECHR). Since then, it has become increasingly common for trade union lawyers to look to Article 11 of the Convention as providing grounds for an expansive reading of the very restrictive provisions of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 (TULRCA) dealing with industrial action. In 2008, the Demir and Baykara decision...