Leafleting campaign
[ch 1: pages 11-12]A union leafleting campaign aimed at persuading customers to boycott a product or service, or to support the union’s campaign, will not amount to the economic tort of interference with a contract, or unlawful inducement to breach a contract. This is because the leaflet is aimed at customers, who are not party to the contract and are free to make their own minds up, as this leading case demonstrates:
The Transport & General Workers’ Union (TGWU) – now merged with Unite – was in dispute with the employer, a mushroom growing business, over proposals to change overtime arrangements to reduce costs. When talks broke down, the union launched industrial action. 89 striking workers were dismissed and in protest, the union’s regional officer announced that union members would hand out leaflets outside supermarkets supplied by the employer to inform potential customers of the dispute. The leaflet asked customers to support the dismissed strikers by boycotting the employer’s mushrooms at the store.
The Court of Appeal ruled that there was no interference with contracts in this case. The leaflet was directed at customers of the supermarket, not at the supermarket’s managers. The union members were lawfully distributing the leaflets and the prospective customers, as third parties, were free to make up their own minds whether or not to buy the mushrooms.
Middlebrook Mushrooms Limited v TGWU [1993] IRLR 232