9. INDUSTRIAL ACTION

The law relating to industrial action covers not just strikes but lockouts, go slows, working to rule, and refusing to cross picket lines, regardless of whether or not industrial action is in breach of an agreed procedure. Overtime bans (even where overtime is voluntary) are normally considered as industrial action since the aim of those carrying it out is to put pressure on the employer to do, or not to do, something.

In the UK there is no positive legal right to strike. Instead, workers are protected by “immunities” if taking specific forms of industrial action that would otherwise be unlawful. How these immunities operate is explained below.

Some employees are forbidden by law to strike. These include members of the armed services, prison officers and police officers, The Prison Officers Association is currently challenging the government’s prohibition on prison officers striking at the European Court of Human Rights) as an infringement of Article 11: the right to freedom of association and to belong to a trade union.

Some forms of industrial action are absolutely banned. The most important is secondary action — industrial action in support of the workers of another employer. This has important implications as a result of the increasing fragmentation of the workforce and the growing use of in-sourcing, out-sourcing and agency workers, because it means that workers who work alongside each other, sometimes even doing the same job for the same organisation, cannot lawfully act in support of each other’s industrial action because they have different employers.