Court rejects port company's attempt to block strike action

The Court of Appeal ruled last month that employers cannot block strike action by wrongly classifying workers as self-employed.

The T&G general union successfully challenged Associated British Ports (ABP) which had tried to get an injunction to stop workers piloting ships down the Humber estuary taking strike action. ABP claimed that the pilots were not workers at all but self-employed and therefore excluded from the right to strike.

To comply with the legal rules on industrial action the dispute has to be a "trade dispute" between "workers and their employers" and has to be concerned with key workplace issues. The company argued that because the workers had individual contracts and were not covered by collective agreements they were not workers, could not have a trade dispute and therefore could not strike.

The Court of Appeal rejected this narrow interpretation. It refused to grant ABP the injunction and in addition extended the timetable for the union to call the strike if that was what it decided to do.

The pilots' began strike action on 11 December - see page 4 for details.