Strikes and the Individual Worker—Reforming the Law

Abstract

The government's recent Green Paper “Trade Unions and Their Members” contains several radical proposals for the reform of labour law, among them the suggestion that no union member should be subject to penalties by his trade union for disobedience to the union's call to take strike action. This proposal is based partly on a philosophy of committed individualism—everyone has a right to decide to work whatever a trade union has to say about the taking of industrial action—and partly on the government's concern over the well-publicised sanctions which unions such as the N. U. M. and the N. U. J. have recently imposed on members who have rejected official calls to participate in industrial action. The suggestion is made at a time when the actual impact of strikes (measured in terms of working days lost) is at its lowest point for twenty years and at a stage when, as one commentator has observed, “[t]he trend in this area of law, as developed in the courts and by Parliament, is towards strengthening the position of the union member who refuses to participate in industrial action”. Given its conviction that the taking of industrial action should be a matter left to individual choice (para. 2.22), it is hardly surprising that the government appears to view sympathetically the possibility of extending to members disciplined by their union (by expulsion or some lesser sanction) the right of complaint to an industrial tribunal.