BT strike bid halted by legal hitch
Updated on 06 July 2010
So near and yet so far - that is what Communication Workers Union officials are saying, writes Channel 4 News Business Correspondent Siobhan Kennedy after they were forced to call off their planned ballot of BT workers.
Exactly what those issues are is unclear, although they appear to centre on the definition of the word "workplace".
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Sources close to the negotiations told Channel 4 News that BT argued that because they were mobile workers, the union could not pass on their correct address, and therefore BT’s ability to put in place contingency plans for strike days was impeded.
The union insists it's a technicality but its lawyers say it was enough for BT to take the matter to the high court to seek an injunction if the union had pressed ahead with a strike. So to avoid costly legal action which would likely fail, the union pulled the plug at the eleventh hour.
Instead, BT has extended an olive branch and invited the union back into talks, which they have agreed to sign up to. But lest anyone think the tone is harmonious, you only need read the union’s press release to see how furious they are.
Andy Kerr, CWU deputy general secretary, said: "We're bitterly disappointed that this ballot has had to be cancelled. It's devastating for our members and for trade union rights in the
"The legal technicalities on which this ballot has been cancelled again raise questions over the right to strike and the extremely restrictive trade union laws that exist in the
"We will take all necessary steps to allow us to re-ballot our members as soon as is practically possible."
Privately the union acknowledges that those steps will likely be lengthy and complicated because they essentially involve CWU bringing a legal test case to challenge the definition of "workplace" and change it to take into consideration that many workers are now mobile and, as such, do not have a fixed work address.
Another option would be to exclude those workers that are "mobile" but that would undermine their democratic right to strike and wouldn’t be preferable, sources say.
The move follows similar interventions by the bosses of British Airways, which used the high court to overturn one of the series of planned strike actions by its employees at the end of last year.
And National Rail forced the RMT union to call off a strike of its signal workers after the courts granted the rail company an injunction on the grounds that the RMT had not given sufficient information to its members about the results of the ballot.
The timing of BT's successful action comes as ministers are reportedly holding confidential talks over changing union strike laws ahead of government plans to cut up to a million public sector jobs.
While Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat minister at the Department for Business insists that the existing laws work, one Cabinet member told the Times newspaper that the coalition intends to re-examine the law if job losses and changes to pay and conditions lead to widespread industrial unrest.
The Confederation of British Industries has already argued that industrial action should go ahead only if 40 per cent of the balloted workforce support it.
