APPLICATION TO INDUSTRIAL COURT WITH A VIEW TO WITHDRAWAL OF RECOGNITION. (Hansard, 4 August 1971)

§ The Solicitor-General
I beg to move. That this House doth agree with the said Amendment.

§ Mr. Speaker
Yes, if the House so wishes.

§ The Solicitor-General
Hon. Members will see that the three Amendments are identical as a matter of words. Clause 49, to which they are directed, allows the recognised position of a union to be challenged by an agreed percentage of the employees in the bargaining unit. At present, an application for withdrawal of recognition of sole bargaining agent status can be made only in respect of a trade union, the expression "a trade union" appearing twice in subsection (1) and once in subsection (2).
These three Amendments will replace the expression "trade union" by the expression "organisation of workers". They have two effects, one, from the point of view of hon. Members opposite, benevolent, and the other—though I hesitate to say it—from their point of view malevolent.
The benevolent effect is this. As the Clause now stands, it would not be possible for a group of workers or anyone else to challenge the recognised bargaining rights of a house union. If the only organisation which can be challenged is a registered trade union, and if recognition is accorded to an unregistered, non-independent, craven and submissive house union, as the hon. Member for Salford, 1656 West (Mr. Orme) describes it, the position of that house union, embraced, as the saying goes, in a sweetheart deal with the employer, could not be challenged under the Clause as it stands. The benevolent effect of the Amendment is to allow a registered union or an aggrieved minority to challenge the position of that unregistered house union.
I come now to what I have called the malevolent effect, from the point of view of hon. Members opposite, though it is only with the greatest hesitation that I acknowledge the "mal" at the beginning of that word, because it is only very mildly malevolent. The opportunity to challenge an unregistered organisation should be accorded to the disaffected minority. According to the foundations of the Government's proposals here, it would not be right if it were easier to withdraw recognition from a registered organisation than from an unregistered organisation. So the effect of the second part of this proposal is that either the one-fifth or the two-fifths—whichever be the situation—of the workers involved would be able to secure a hearing of their case if they were challenging either a house union or an unregistered union in just the same way as they would be able to challenge the position of a registered union under the Clause as it stood when it left this House.

§ Mr. John Fraser
If I may deal with the malevolent aspects first, I will say that the Solicitor-General is nothing if not thorough. He resembles less, perhaps, the Lord Chancellor in the House of Lords than the Lord Chancellor in the Gilbert and Sullivan opera who said "I've got them on the list and none of them be missed". In this case, the hon. and learned Gentleman is not missing an organisation of workers.
The organisation of workers cannot apply to the Court in the first place for recognition because the preceding Clause of the Bill states that it can obtain recognition only if it is a registered trade union and that if it ceases to be a registered trade union, the recognition order ceases to have effect. Therefore, the point in allowing an application to be made to the Court to end a recognition agreement can arise only in circumstances where the organisation of workers, despite the assistance of the Court, has obtained 1657 recognition from the employer, the recognition having been obtained without having to go through the legal procedures. Nevertheless, lest one small organisation of workers escapes, this part is being amended.
If I may comment on the benevolent aspect of the Lords Amendments to which the Solicitor-General referred, throughout the Committee stage we tried to alter the definitions in the Bill so that an organisation of workers would never by definition be a house union. We attempted from time to time to put in the word "independent". Had those Amendments been accepted, the so-called benevolent aspects of these Lords Amendments would not be necessary.