Unofficial Disputes

HC Deb 13 February 1990 vol 167 c200W

4. Mr. Oppenheim

To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what proportion of strikes result from unofficial action.

Mr. Howard

Approximately half all stoppages and one third of all days lost in 1988 were in unofficial disputes.

81. Mr. John Greenway

To ask the Secretary of State for Employment how many working days were lost last year as a result of unofficial industrial action.

Mr. Nicholls

Separate statistics on unofficial strikes ceased to be published as a regular series in 1981. However, information from a special exercise for 1988 was included in the Government's Green Paper "Unofficial Action and the Law", a copy of which is in the House of Commons Library. This showed that approximately 1.3 million days were lost to unofficial disputes in 1988.