Industrial action

Industrial action

Industrial action is integral to the collective bargaining process. It can be initiated by employers (in the form of a lockout), or by workers through their union, usually in the form of a strike. Industrial action, or the threat of industrial action, is part of the leverage that one side exercises on the other in the negotiation to secure a deal. In this context, it is a mechanism for resolving disputes of interest.

Industrial action is also used to resolve disputes of right.

It often represents the final stage of an industrial dispute between an employer and workers where other measures have failed in securing agreement to a collective trade dispute.

A strike is defined in section 246 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 (TULR(C)A 1992) as any concerted stoppage of work. Other forms of worker industrial action, short of a complete work stoppage, include:

•
a ‘go-slow’
•
work-to-rule
•
an overtime ban
•
a call-out ban

The right to take industrial action

Any right to take industrial action is made up of two interrelated components:

To view the latest version of this document and thousands of others like it, sign-in with LexisNexis or register for a free trial.

TAKE A FREE TRIAL

Latest Employment News

EHRC demands policy changes from 19 organisations on single-sex spaces guidance

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has completed its review of 404 policy examples referred by the UK government following its 2024 call for input on single-sex spaces. The review identified policies from 19 organisations—including those in policing, education, health, and public services—that misrepresented the Equality Act 2010 (EqA 2010) by implying an automatic legal right to access single-sex spaces based solely on self-identification.

New fraud law crackdown will take years, lawyers warn

Law360, London: Anti-fraud enforcement agencies will soon fire the starting gun on major reforms that will hold companies criminally liable for fraud—but the race to court will be slow, and it will take years before prosecutors can claim success, lawyers say.

Home Office introduces modern slavery optional international reporting template

The Home Office, in collaboration with the Australian and Canadian governments, has published an optional international reporting template to support organisations in meeting supply chain transparency requirements under modern slavery legislation in the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. This initiative aims to reduce the administrative burden for multinational organisations by enabling the preparation of a single consolidated report that satisfies the core legal obligations across all three jurisdictions.

Failure to prevent fraud—an effective means to combat corporate crime?

Corporate Crime analysis: While previous failure to prevent offences—bribery and tax evasion—have resulted in few prosecutions so far, they have arguably influenced a corporate compliance culture in the UK. In this third and last part of our series on the corporate offence of failure to prevent fraud, Aziz Rahman of Rahman Ravelli assesses the effectiveness of failure to prevent offences in holding corporate bodies to account for economic crime.