Pre-strike Ballots, Picketing and Protest: Banning Industrial Action by the Back Door?

Abstract Our aim in this article is to analyse the provisions of the Trade Union Act 2016 that deal with pre-strike ballots and picketing. We also consider Government proposals to legislate in respect of protests associated with industrial action (‘leverage action’), which were abandoned in favour of plans to amend the Code of Practice on Picketing. We note the suggestion made by several commentators and Opposition politicians that the Government might have intended with these changes to make it significantly more difficult for trade unions and workers to exercise their rights to take industrial action, and to engage in forms of protest associated with industrial action. Examining the stated policy aims of Government, and available evidence which speaks to those policy aims and to the likely impact of the new rules, we argue that the freedom of workers and trade unions to participate in and organise industrial action has indeed been narrowed very considerably by this Act; further, that the case for amending the existing legal framework was not at all well made.