N.U.F.T.O, activists discuss trades unions

"The less we see of. my practising brethren in industrial relations" said Professor K.W. Wedderburn, holder of the Sir Ernest Cassell Chair of | Commercial Law at the University of London, "the better it is for trade unions, the workers they ‘represent end industrial relations." I can only touch on a few points of: the talk on "The Trade Unions and the Law" that Professor Wedderburn gave to some 150 London Branch officers and stewards at the beginning of February, One point that recurred throughout the talk was that it is essential to keep the law out of collective bargaining, that industrial peace and work cannot be imposed by injunction, During the last 50 years, the trade unions have not been very concerned about the law, because there has been, more or less, agreement that it was the job of the parties in industry to get on with the job of negotiating and, if necessary, fight it out. Up to the end of the 19th century, decisions of the Courts were based solely on criminal law and were, therefore, a barrier to trade union organisation and to industrial relations, The trade unions at the time being solely an industrial movement, demanded the protection of Parliament. This was first partially given in the Act of 1875 and a little more substantially in the Trades Dispute Act of 1906,...During the inter-war period, the understanding . that it was better to keep the law out of collective bargaining was accepted by the employers...At the present time, Agreements cannot be enforced in a Court of Law. In some countries there is law enforcement, but this does not necessarily mean that less working hours are lost as a result of strikes, The tradition of this country in industrial relations is for autonomous collective bargaining, except for the compulsory arbitration during the war. Judges are now finding new types of offences and penalties,..The amendment ~ of the Trades Union Act in 1965 appears to have eliminated the civil conspiracy or tort to break the contract of employment in a trade dispute which threatened the unions through the Rookes v. Barnard decision of the House of Lords, However, it does not give protection from actions such as the Stratford v. Lindley case, which is based on a case in 1779, when a sea captain threatened to fire a cannon to prevent goods being unloaded from another ship. This is based on a wrongful act which causes damage. In the Stratford v. Lindley case, what the courts have said is that the threat of a breach of contract is as illegal as firing a cannon to procure a breach of commercial contractecesess f™ the positive side of the law there is very little, The Factories Act deals to some degree with health, welfare and safety, but generally is not eaforced, There is a need for laws on hours, equal pay, protection against arbitrary dismissal, the widening of the Trucks Acts to non-manual workers and other positive features of law. The position today is that the employers want all sorts of legal measures to prevent stoppages of work, The engineer= ing employers are even proposing a system of financial penalties (not fines because this would involve imprisonment) which could be deducted from wages and follow workers from job to job. Far from bringing industrial peace, such legislation would bring about industrial 007, Incursion of legality into collective bargaining would very much weaken the workers’ side in bargaining, While I could write much more, I am sure space would not be available, I am sure of one thing...everybody enjoyed and learned a lot in these two hours, The concluding remarks of Professor Wedderburn were: "Keep to the traditional position, Keep the law out of‘industrial reletionse" *This article originally appeared in NUFTO Record, April, 1966.