Industrial relations

A legal challenge by a major construction firm to the validity of a union’s strike ballot has been dismissed by the High Court. The union had done enough to ensure that only those entitled to vote in the ballot were sent ballot papers, having undertaken additional checks on its membership data before conducting the vote.

In a decision which has been welcomed by the unions, the Court of Appeal has taken a less prescriptive approach to the interpretation of the complex balloting and notification requirements with which unions must comply to take advantage of their statutory immunity when organising strike action. The Court of Appeal deals with accidental failures in the balloting process, the scope of a union’s duty to maintain accurate records to comply with strike/ballot notices, and how extensive the union’s explanation of the figures it supplies to the employer needs to be.