Charles Pigott shares a close reading of the Court of Appeal’s ruling on defining the limits of collective bargaining
- The Court of Appeal has given its first ever ruling on the scope of section 145B TULRCA 1992.
- It has said that one-off offers, which if accepted would have the effect of by-passing collective bargaining on that occasion, are permitted.
Until now we have had no definitive ruling on the interpretation of a group of sections which were inserted into the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 (TULRCA 1992) back in 2004.
Sections 145A to 145F TULRCA 1992 were enacted at least partly in response to a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in Wilson v United Kingdom [2002] IRLR 568, which identified a gap in the UK’s trade union laws in relation to Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights (freedom of association). The gap was the failure to prohibit an employer from offering workers inducements to sign contracts accepting the end of union representation, as long as that did not have the effect
