THE CONTENT OF TRADE UNION RULES REGULATING ADMISSION
| Author | R. W. Rideout |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1966.tb00920.x |
| Published date | 01 March 1966 |
| Date | 01 March 1966 |
THE CONTENT
OF
TRADE UNION RULES
REGULATING ADMISSION
R.
W.
RIDEOUT*
THE
EXTENT
OF
LEGAL
REGULATION
AND
ITS
EFFECT
As with disciplinary rules,l
so
with rules governing admission to member-
ship of a trade union, the chief characteristic, especially
so
far as procedure
is concerned, is the amount that is left unsaid. Whereas, however, it was
suggested that inadequacy
of
disciplinary rules would ultimately tend to
lead the unions into legal difficulty this can hardly be said to be likely even
when admission is left to whatever custom the local committee chooses to
adopt. The law, in fact, scarcely touches the admission process. An American
judge, speaking in 1890,~ summed up what was then, and what in this
country still isY3 the attitude of the law in these words:
The body has
a
clear right to prescribe qualifications
for
its
membership.
It
may
make
it
exclusive
as
it
sees
fit.
It may make the restriction
on
the line
of
citizenship, nationality, age, creed
or
profession,
as
well
as
numbers. This
power is incident
to
its
character
as
a
voluntary association.
There is little real chance of the courts, by themselves, moving from
this position as they have from
a
number
of
earlier ideas in the disciplinary
field. The barrier in the way of any such movement is the difficulty of
discovering a cause of action
-
a ‘legal peg’
-
upon which the rejected
applicant could found his claim, even if he had been excluded by the most
improper process or by the proper operation of entirely unreasonable rules.
As yet he has no contract of membership with the union which he can
allege to have been broken and no civil liability in tort arises merely from
the fact that exclusion from the union prevents him from entering, or
remaining in,
a
particular trade. Lord Denning M.R. has, on several
occasions, suggested that the rules
of
a trade union are now so much of
public concern that the courts should be able to declare them void for
unreasonableness at the suit of any person injured as
a
result of such
a
state
of
affairs, without the need to found such an action in contract or tort. In
England local authority bye-laws are subject to such a restriction and it
is,
of course, true that
a
rule forbidding entry to a powerful national union
may be more important than one which restricts entry to a public park.
*
Senior Lecturer in English Law, University College, London
1
Discussed in a previous article,
Brifish
Journnl
of
Industrial
Relutions,
Vol
111,
No.
2
*
Green,
V.
C.,
in Mayer
v.
Journeymen Stonecutters’ Association, 1890
(N.
J.)
20A.
492
See, e.g. Faramus
v.
Film Artistes Federation
(1964)
1
All E.R.
25
(House
of
Lords)
77
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