LABOUR WATERS WORKERS' RIGHTS

Peter Paterson examines

Labour's new plans for trade union law

AS AN alternative attraction to the royal wedding, the Neil and Norm show on Wednesday of last week offered not only succour to fervent republicans, few as they may be, but also a foretaste of one of the most crucial yet slippery planks in Labour's platform for the next general election.

Both Norman Willis and Neil Kinnock insisted that the day had not been deliber- ately chosen to ensure minimum publicity for their proposals on trade union law reform, and their excuses were credible enough: all to do with the synchronising of meetings of Labour's national executive committee and the general council of the TUC, with impending holidays and over- stuffed diaries making 23 July the only day possible. Besides, no one at the TUC had been invited to the wedding.

Even so, this reshaping of union law is contentious enough for the inevitable rows to be postponed a little, and for both men to explain them with a sustained level of garrulity unusual even by the standards of used car salesmen. After months at the drawing board and hours in committee, this was soft-sell time.

What we now have by way of Labour Party policy towards the unions is covered in the clammy fingerprints of men desper- ate to do a deal, moreover one which, while giving the signatories most of what each of them wants, will carry conviction with the voters. How far have they suc- ceeded?

We have to remember that the starting point for both the TUC and the Party has been laid down by those sacrosanct bodies, the annual TUC Congress and the Party Conference: that the Tory industrial rela- tions laws of the past seven years must be repealed in their entirety by a future Labour government.

Despite the high degree of debate and consultation among the unions over whether they should — or could — opt for a restoration of the old system of immuni- ties, or go for statutory rights, there remains a discontented rump which is all for the status quo ante. Together with the newly reorganised Left in the Labour Party, it will fight the new proposals at this autumn's conferences. So far as it went, the argument within the Labour Party has been somewhat less sophisticated than among the unions. Mr Kinnock and his soft-Left acolytes appear to have had but one real objective — the retention of voting rights for union mem- bers on the election of officials and deci- sion on whether or not to strike. Having won on that central point, the resulting document suggests that the TUC was then given plenty of leeway in drawing up the rest of the proposals.

Mr Willis's task will be to convince the waverers that the price to be paid for the methods of participatory democracy chosen in People at Work: New Rights, New Responsibilities, is worth paying to get the lawyers out of the hair of the unions. The 1984 Trade Union Act places an obligation on unions, whatever their own rule books say, to allow their members a secret ballot, either by post or 'at the workplace', for the election of voting members of their governing bodies, and when industrial action is contemplated.

Debarred from re-enacting such a provi- sion, the Labour Party-TUC blueprint would instead oblige unions to write simi- lar requirements into their rule books. This raises several awkward points. The first, and it is a matter of real principle, is that to require union rule books to conform to a statutory imperative may well be in breach of one of a series of conventions of the International Labour Organisation to which the British government is a signa- tory. If that matters, it is because the TUC often bases its criticism of government behaviour in the field of industrial relations on alleged breaches of these same conven- tions. Not a good start, perhaps, for a new deal in industrial relations.

The second substantial point is that Mr Kinnock has decided to defer to the tradi- tional union dislike of their business com- ing before the courts. Union members who believe their rights have been withheld or violated by their own unions — for exam- ple, by refusing to ballot, or depriving individuals of the means to take part in a vote, or giving rise to suspicion that a ballot has not been fairly conducted — will no longer have recourse to the system of justice which now governs such matters.

A special tribunal is to be established to hear this kind of complaint, headed by a lawyer, it is true, but with no 'leakage' to the High Court except on points of law: a somewhat Star Chamber-ish device, which owes something to the disciplinary machin- ery of the BMA The Labour-TUC proposals would also require ballots to be held, apart from the election of officers, only to sanction strike action. In other words, no industrial action short of a strike would need the vote of the members concerned, suggesting that under such a new order strikes might well not occur regularly, but that the power to unleash overtime bans, go-slows and work- ing to-rules would be restored to union leaders as it had been exercised prior to 1979.

Finally, the use of ex parte injunctions by employers against unions would be ban- ned; a dubious suggestion since it is at least part .of the experience of the past seven years that it has on occasion been exercised by employers as much on behalf of their own workers as in their own commercial interest. As Woodrow Wyatt pointed out in the Spectator last week, trade unionists with a complaint against their own union might well be intimidated by the necessity to go to law 'to enforce what should automatically be theirs'.

One of the difficulties in attempting to summarise the Labour-TUC proposals is that bold declarations of purpose are inter- spersed with what look like escape clauses, deliberate obscurities, or unfinished busi- ness. Take the contentious subject of picketing, for example. We are told that the law will be redrawn to ensure that workers can picket peacefully 'without the continual threat of civil and criminal liabil- ity'. Does this, with its absence of any mention of intimidation by numbers and its strong hint of decriminalisation of virtually anything done in the cause of picketing, suggest a kind of Wapping Charter, or is it all left too vague to mean anything very much?

Again, in addition to the independent tribunal which will hear the complaints of union members that their rights have been infringed, there is also the prospect of a 'new tripartite body, comparable perhaps to the Central Arbitration Committee' whose view would 'need to be sought' if the validity of any kind of industrial action is challenged. Before anyone can get their teeth into that, the following sentence throws it all up into the air again: 'We are also considering whether, alternatively, there would be any advantage in estab- lishing a specialist court to deal with such matters.' And everything has to be read in the context of the ringing declaration: 'Unions organising a withdrawal of labour or other forms of industrial action will have comprehensive legal protection against ac- tions in tort, contract and equity.' Not much hope of redress, any employer might

feel, in any court or tribunal or tripartite body established under such a principle.

Mr Kinnock and Mr Willis's vagueness suggests that much of the bargaining still has to be done once a Labour administra- tion is safely in office. But getting there is the trick, and one wonders how well this package will stand up to the rough and tumble of electoral debate, with eager snipers on the Left and the Right. People have come to regard the present system as a success, and the participants are gradual- ly learning to live with it. Trade union members certainly appear to value their new voting rights, and several union elec- tions which would once have passed muster have had to be re-run as a result of the vigilance of the members. Few unions are now as willing as the printers to jeopardise their funds in contempt fines. And pretty Soon, if the system survives more or less in its present form, there will be numbers of union officials and personnel officers who have known no other.

None of these considerations will count in the autumn conference debates, when Mr Kinnock's best tactic will be to con- demn the Left as anti-democratic. Some- thing of a struggle to overcome the Left to get the reforms accepted may also, subse- quently, help him sell these proposals to the electorate.

What it comes down to in the end, however, is that the Labour leadership has identified what is most popular in the Tory laws, and wants to discard the rest. But without meaningful sanctions it is doubtful whether the 'good bits' on their own will work. If, by chance, industrial relations becomes the key issue at the next election, as defence did in 1983, Labour will once more be contemplating the heavy penalty it pays for its close association with the unions.