This chapter provides an introduction to collective employment law. Collective employment law concerns the regulation of the relationship between trade unions and employees in their capacity as trade union members. In order to be able to enforce these rights it is often necessary for a union to be listed by the Certification Officer, recognised by an employer or for its members to be acting ‘officially’ in the name of the union. Freedom of association is protected by laws which deter employers from dismissing employees or taking action short of dismissal against them for a trade union reason. The law gives equal protection to people who suffer the same detriments because they are not union members or because they have left a union.
Chapter
27. Freedom of association
Chapter
29. Industrial action
The law on the organisation of industrial action is mainly contained in the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992. This chapter sketches out the broad principles and their practical implications. It looks separately at three distinct topics: firstly, the law relating to trade unions and trade union officials organising industrial action; secondly, the law relating to individual workers taking industrial action; and, thirdly, the law relating to picketing (ie, demonstrating support for a strike outside an employer’s premises). This is an area of employment law which is both complex (some would say unnecessarily so) as well as controversial in a number of respects.
Chapter
28. Consultation and bargaining
This chapter looks at the regulation of collective bargaining and at ways in which employers can, in certain circumstances, be required in law to recognise trade unions and to consult collectively with their workforces. After briefly considering why the UK maintains a tradition of voluntarism as far as collective bargaining and collective agreements are concerned, it goes on to assess the work of the Central Arbitration Committee—the authority which has the major enforcing role in respect of the law in this field. This is followed by an analysis of four distinct, but interrelated areas of regulation: disclosure of information for collective bargaining purposes, compulsory union recognition, European Works Councils and the Information and Consultation Regulations.
