REPORTS OF COMMITTEES
| Date | 01 November 1968 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1968.tb01218.x |
| Published date | 01 November 1968 |
REPORTS
OF
COMMITTEES
REPORT
OF
THE
ROYAL
COMMISSION
ON
TRADE UNIONS
AND
EMPLOYERS'
ASSOCIATIONS
IT
is not possible in a short note to do justice to the baker's dozen of
curate's eggs enshrined
in
the Donovan Report and its twelve
research papers.' Inevitably the Report of the first Royal
Commission
on
labour law and industrial relations since
1906
attracts attention; but the research papers, produced by the unit
under
Dr.
McCarthy, specially created by the wisdom of the Commis-
sion, could in the long run turn out to be of even greater significance.
The Commission unfortunately became known as
a
Commission on
"
trade unions
";
but its terms of reference were incomparably
wider, including all
"
relations between managements and
employees." This brief note concentrates upon features of the
Report of special interest to lawyers, and must perforce ignore many
individual dissents by particular Commissioners all of whom signed
the Report.
The Report is most important for its analysis of the character of
British industrial relations.
In
legal terms, the process which began
with the
ezclusion
of common law and allied doctrines
from
industrial
affairs between
1871
and
1906
(because the ordinary doctrines would
have made
a
modern system of collective bargaining impossible with-
out constant risk of illegality for workers' organisations) was
rationalised between
1920
and
1950
into the principle of
''
voluntarism
))
or
"
abstention of the law
))
from collective labour
relations.
It
is important to understand that this notion is not
equivalent to an
absence
of labour law.
It
means that labour law
assumes a special form. The statutes protecting rights to take
industrial action are
''
negative
)'
not
"
positive,"
i.e.,
do not set out
rights to strike, etc., but exclude doctrines which would make some
acts unlawful in trade disputes. Laws about collective bargaining
do not regulate its forms; they act as props to the system of
voluntary negotiation, as in the case of the Terms and Conditions of
Employment Act
1969.
(The Prices and Incomes Acts
1966-1968
are the first major exception here since the repeal of the unused and
repealed Act
of
1927.)
As for individual employment law, we have
had a lot of
it;
Factories Acts from
1888
to
1961
(currently about
to be recodified), and more recently the Acts on contracts of employ-
ment and redundancy of
1968
and
1965.
But none of these has
inhibited collective bargaining
above
the
floor
of
rights thereby
established for each worker, unionist
or
not. A failure to appreciate
1
Report
of
Royal Commission
on
Trade
Unions
and Employers' Associations
1965-1968,
Chairman
Rt.
Hon.
Lord
Donoven
(Cmn:;
3623,
H.M.S.O.).
a
Research
fl&pers
1
to
11
(listed
in
Appendix
4),
and
Workplace Industrial
Relations (Government Social
Survey.
SS.
402,
H.M.S.O.).
674
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