UNISONActive is an unofficial blog produced by UNISON activists for UNISON activists. Bringing news, briefings and events from a progressive left perspective.

Tuesday 18 May 2010

BA High Court injunction is a grotesque abuse of the employment law‏

For the second time in 6 months the British judiciary has granted BA an injunction to thwart democratically supported industrial action on spurious grounds. The Pavlovian judge Justice McCombe using a bogus balance of (employers) convenience argument to uphold claims that all individual union members had not received full ballot results.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/mobile/business/10119196.stm

This is despite previous strike action by Unite – based on the same ballot - having gone unchallenged by the employer. And at the same time both sides were committed to talks at ACAS.

This is the latest in a long line of judicial attacks on the right to strike in Britain in flagrant breach of ILO conventions. Unite made a mistake not appealing in December, as the late Mick McGahey once famously said ‘if you don’t stop running they don’t stop chasing’. Today’s appeal is vitally necessary and if unsuccessful the trade union movement must pool our resources to challenge these abuses of trade unionists human rights in the European courts.

But how much worse does it need to get before the TUC convenes a collective, fighting response rather than plaintively lament this repressive state of affairs? http://www.tuc.org.uk/law/tuc-17941-f0.cfm

Past generations of British trade unionists including under the Thatcher did not acquiesce to such fundamental attacks on union rights. Nor should we.

Further information
http://unisonactive.blogspot.com/2010/04/high-court-dances-to-anti-strike-tune.html
http://unisonactive.blogspot.com/2010/03/britains-anti-union-laws-breach-human.html