brothermagrew wrote:BELIAL wrote:Tamsky wrote:Hi Hess
You can only picket your own place of work but an area or Divi rep can picket their patch.
Think you might be able to picket an alternative office if it is nearer to your home
Picketing
For more than a century, trade unions and organised groups of workers have used picketing as a powerful means of protecting their employment rights and improving the conditions in which they are expected to work. In recent years, picketing has been used by campaigning and protest groups as an effective way of bringing their views to public attention, for example, by picketing premises where politicians are due to attend, demonstrating outside head offices of organisations and 'blockading' ports and airports supporting live animal exports. The law gives special status to picketing when it is related to an industrial dispute, but no special exemption under the criminal law. However, most picketing is lawful unless it causes an obstruction of the highway or is designed to intimidate.
You are protected under the civil law if you picket in connection with an industrial dispute at or near your workplace for the purpose of peacefully obtaining or communicating information or peacefully persuading any person to work or abstain from working (Trade Union and Labour Relations Act 1992). Employers have increasingly used the civil courts to get injunctions in order to limit the effectiveness of picketing. Injunctions have been granted on the basis that it was not the workplace of some or all of the pickets, or that the picketing was not peaceful. Unions that continue to picket in breach of an injunction are in contempt of court and liable to pay very heavy fines. By injunction the court can limit the location and number of pickets and impose conditions on their conduct.
No legal case has been decided which specifies that a particular number of pickets at the location of an industrial dispute will always be lawful. But a government Code of Practice, which the courts can refer to, suggests that the number of pickets at any entrance to a workplace should not generally exceed six. In applications for injunctions, the civil courts have tended to set the upper limit of the number of pickets that must be allowed at six. Other cases have given the police very wide discretion to limit the number of pickets if they believe it to be necessary to prevent a breach of the peace or an obstruction of the highway.
Secondary picketing - picketing at a workplace or premises where you do not work - does not have the same civil law protection, but is not a criminal offence. It is worth remembering that the police do not have any enhanced powers over secondary pickets and it is not their job to enforce the civil law on picketing, even if an injunction is in force. Their general powers in this area are dealt with below.
Police Powers and Picketing
Giving the police greater power to control and restrict picketing was a primary purpose of the POA. Any picket of two or more people is a 'public assembly' and therefore subject to police conditions under the POA. In addition to the power to impose conditions, the police possess a wide range of public order powers to restrict and control picketing and to arrest pickets for various offences. These include:
• Obstruction of the highway on the basis of too many pickets, even if they are moving, or a single picket trying to compel a driver to stop and listen.
• Obstruction of the police - for example, refusing to comply with lawful directions when the police are acting to prevent a breach of the peace.
• Using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour (Section 4, POA).
• Disorderly conduct likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress (Section 5, POA).
• Aggravated trespass (Section 68, Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994).
Employment Policy & Legislation
Employment Act 2008
Employment Relations Act 2004
Work and Families Act 2006
Employment Guidance
Trade unions
Employment Law Guidance Programme
Industrial action and the law (Part B) - Guidance
Inducement in the course of picketing is not itself lawful simply because the industrial action supported by the picketing is lawfully organised. For such inducement to be lawful it must satisfy certain conditions laid down by the law.
These conditions include the following:
that the picketing is at or near the pickets' own place of work; and
that the purpose of the picketing is peacefully to obtain or communicate information, or peacefully to persuade a person to work or not to work.
There are, however, three exceptions to the rule that an inducement in the course of picketing has immunity only if it is done at or near the pickets' own place of work.
First, a trade union official may accompany a member of his union whom he represents so long as the member is picketing at his own place of work.
Secondly, a person (for example, a mobile worker) who does not normally work at one particular place, or for whom it is impracticable to picket at his actual place of work, may picket at the premises of the employer from which he works or from which the work is administered. Thirdly, a person who is not in employment may picket at his former place of work in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute, but only if the termination of his employment gave rise to or is connected with the dispute in support of which he is picketing.
Thanks brother but think your bit missed this, hope it proves useful
. We do primary sorting for 2 hrs a day, we clear everything everyday , no matter what it is. We knocked backed geo route several times coz its always wrong, has us doing rounds for 6 hrs ! But now they say its coming no matter what ,and its going to cut another 7 rounds meaning everyone gets another 2 rows to take. We get followed , harrassed, threatened with prep test etc etc when we book overtime and cant clear. We`ve had people sacked for not fastening helmets and not having the right tyre pressure on their bikes. We have to make sure we sign in, sign out,wear boots, weigh bags, checked bikes/vans daily, do the daily tick sheet. the list really does go on and on and we get treated like criminals, or like we work for the secret service. Its a laugh
