Union Employees in UK Law

One question which arises is what is the point of the explanation, and what is achieved for the employer by providing it. It could, no doubt, be provided in fairly anodyne terms, referring to having started with the membership records kept at whatever is the relevant level in the union, and having arranged for the data to be checked locally for any recent changes.

So far as that is concerned, it seems to me that, in principle, it is not unreasonable for a trade union, when supplying information derived from its own sources, to be obliged to say something about how the information supplied has been arrived at. Paragraph 16 of the Code of Practice, quoted above, illustrates the fact that there may well be a need for some explanation in order that an employer should be able to understand something about the degree of reliability of the data supplied.

Assessing the requirement imposed by section 226A and 234A in this light, and with regard to the particular problem identified in this case, it does not seem to me that the obligation to provide an explanation of the figures, understood as I have explained it, can be said to be unreasonable, excessively onerous or disproportionate.

To ascertain the intention of the parties the court reads the terms of the contract as a whole, giving the words used their natural and ordinary meaning in the context of the agreement, the parties' relationship and all the relevant facts surrounding the transaction so far as known to the parties. To ascertain the parties' intentions the court does not of course inquire into the parties' subjective states of mind but makes an objective judgment based on the materials already identified.

It was suggested that those words related only to the contractual terms and editions. Some of us said as much in Cory Lighterage v. TGWU (1973, 1 WLR, 814 at 821). But that, I think, would be too limited. Terms and conditions of employment may include not only the contractual terms and conditions but those terms which are understood and applied by the parties in practice, or habitually, or by common consent, without ever being incorpated into the contract.

Article 1.2 provides that the Directive is not to apply to 'workers employed by public administrative bodies or by establishments governed by public law (or, in Member States where this concept is unknown, by equivalent bodies)', an exception that Mr Cavanagh accepted did not extend to workers employed by a foreign sovereign state such as the USA.

Very rarely indeed will a Court enforce, either by specific performance or by injunction, a contract for services, either at the behest of the employers or of the employee. The reason is obvious: if one party has no faith in the honesty or integrity or the loyalty of the other, to force him to serve or to employ that other is a plain recipe for disaster.