Industrial action and trade unions : presented to Parliament by the President of the Board of Trade by command of Her Majesty, November 1996

The Green Paper presented here considers a number of options for restricting the scope of strikes in essential services: compulsory arbitration; a statutory requirement to co-operate with conciliation services; giving the Government powers to ban specific strikes; and making the calling of strikes a statutory tort in specific sectors.

All of these have disadvantages. The Government's preferred option is to remove immunity from industrial action which has disproportionate or excessive effects.

Clear criteria would be laid down in statute to help the courts determine what is unacceptable action, and the courts would rule on the effects of the industrial action rather than the merits of the dispute.

A number of other changes to the general law on industrial action are proposed, affecting the provision of notice before industrial action, the majority required in ballots before industrial action, and evidence of continued support for such action.

In addition, the Green Paper examines, and makes proposals for amending, the existing law governing the obligations of employers towards the unions they recognize, and discusses the scope for refining the law on union elections.