Industrial Relations
Give an Act a bad name.
Graham Jones
Trade union opposition to the Industrial Relations Act has been largely artificial. Deste some wild claims by trade union leaders, ‘Ile Act was never used as a grand Tory 11;tincheon to keep the working classes at bay. or was it anything but an excuse for the Slaggering increase in trade union militancy 'tiring Mr Heath's term in office. The Act was a serious and determined attempt to remove Sonie of the anomalies and end some of the Injustices of trade union law. Its repeal, Without any provision to replace some of the Act's important reforms, is a serious retrograde step. Much nonsense has been talked about the Act, on both sides of industry. Trade union antagonism ignored the fact that, in practice, the Industrial Relations Act brought more oenefits to the ordinary worker than it denied 114n. Nevertheless, so successful was trade P,nion opposition to the Act that its progressive aspects became ignored. Even Conserva !lye politicians seemed to doubt their own
Judgement about the reform oT trade union law: they appeared strangely reluctant to ,uetenci the Act. As a result, trade union leaders emerged landslide victors in the Propaganda war, managing to sell to the Public quite successfully that the only practical outcome of the Act was to inflate industrial strife.
The Act was an easy target for those eeking a scapegoat for the breathtaking rise In the number of strikes and works-to-rule during the three and a half years of Conser
vative government. But to claim it was the Act which had been the catalyst to confron
tation was to ignore a trend apparent as far back as 1968. In the last eighteen months of Labour rule, the number of working days lost Was rising at a rate of 46 per cent per year. The Industrial Relations Act was never, even from the outset, a grand Tory ins trument designed to tame the trade unions. When it was introduced, there were those who hoped it would allow the Government to intervene and suspend individual strikes. They Were disappointed: inept application of the Act during the 1972 railway pay dispute, with farcical results, effectively put into deepfreeze what had perhaps been its most Powerful, if not its most controversial section giving the Government powers to introduce ballots and 'cooling off' periods. The Industrial Relations Act became unimPortant in practice as a penal weapon against organised labour. But it established fun damental rights for the man on the shop floor. It also provided groups of workers with the Chance to secure negotiating rights, and sought to safeguard employers by making collective agreements between them and trade unions legally enforcible. Perhaps the most important provision of the Act was to award an aggrieved trade union Member the ultimate right of appeal to a body outside his union. This right, tragically, will disappear under Mr Foot's proposals for repeal of the Act. The new Employment Secretary has not indicated whether he will reinstate it in the Industry Bills he is preparing for later this year: the likelihood is he will not. Thus a worker will lose the opportunity of redress in the courts against trade union abuses of power. He will also lose the basic democratic right the Act gave him not to belong to a trade union if he so wished.
In one area the Industrial Relations Act was an indisputable success, and Mr Foot has recognised this in his decision not to remove its clauses designed to strengthen employees' contracts of employment. During Mr Heath's period in office, the Industrial Relations Court heard 660 appeals referred from industrial tribunals (mostly about redundancy payments and unfair dismissals). Over 300 of these were settled in favour of the employee, two-thirds 'out of court' with the help of the Court's officers.
Inevitably, however, the Court became entrenched in insoluble and intractable disputes. Some cases are still unresolved — like that of the former evangelist from Suffolk, Mr James Goad, who landed the AUEW, the most resolute of all the unions refusing to cooperate with the Court, with £61,000 to pay in fines and costs after he had allegedly been 'banned' from union branch meetings. Unfortunately, the Court is more likely to be remembered for the cases of Mr Goad and of the five London dockers jailed in the summer of 1972 for contempt, and later released on the magical intervention of the Official Solicitor, than for its successes.
The refusal of the big trade unions to cooperate dominated the Act's existence. Their chosen focus of opposition was a refusal to register under the Act. This had no effect on preventing individuals' rights of appeal to the Industrial Relations Court, and was an obviously political gesture. Indeed, non-registration had major disadvantages for the unions, who among other things lost the right to induce breach of the employment contract. The bogus dispute over registration could best have been resolved by an amendment to the Act. It was indulging in semantics, after all, to say that the T&GWU were not a trade union because they did not register. To shift the unions' offensive to some other legal nicety would have allowed the much-needed reform of union rule books. The muddled nature of many of these have been a barrier to wider participation in trade union affairs.
Nevertheless, not all trade unions resented the Act. Some, particularly in the white-collar field, used the machinery it provided to secure recognition and negotiating rights to increase their power position. Meanwhile, employers. saw one of the provisions of the Act they most welcomed — the legal enforcibility of collective agreements unless deemed otherwise — eroded. Many trade unions had exclusion clauses inserted in their contracts. Again, experience showed the Act demanded to be strengthened rather than abandoned.
Now, the Industrial Relations Act is to be repealed. One important benefit it brought workers — protection against unfair dismissal — will remain. But the rest will disappear. The closed shop will almost certainly return: and this is not only reprehensible because it denies an employee the choice of whether or not to belong to a trade union. The re-emergence of the closed shop makes it all the more vital that a worker denied trade union membership has a right of appeal to a body outside his union, for if he is denied membership, he will lose his job. In this respect, Mr Foot will effectively restrict the rights of the individual.
It is clear that the unions now want the safeguards for pickets Mr Foot talked of introducing in the autumn included in the Bill to repeal the Act. It would be unfortunate if pickets became empowered to stop vehicles, the Government awarding them a status hitherto only granted the police and some traffic wardens. It is difficult to see how protecting pickets from the laws of obstruction and conspiracy can do anything but lead to a worsening of the ugly scenes we have seen on the picket lines since 1970.
But Conservative MPs must not only resist increased powers being granted to pickets. In the interests of the individual worker, they must defend the rights the Industrial Relations Act established for employees to choose not to belong to a trade union, and for them to have a right of appeal to an outside body against trade union abuses of power. If these rights are swept aside, industrial relations in Britain will have taken a step in the wrong direction.
Graham Jones is a leader writer for the Glasgow Herald.
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