LTB 116/17 - The Trade Union Act 2016 – Review of CWU Industrial Action Policy and Procedures

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LTB 116/17 - The Trade Union Act 2016 – Review of CWU Industrial Action Policy and Procedures

No. 116/17

27th February 2017



Dear Colleague,

The Trade Union Act 2016 – Review of CWU Industrial Action Policy and Procedures

Branches will be aware that the Trade Union Bill (now the Trade Union Act 2016) completed its passage through parliament in May 2016. Whilst some of the areas covered by the act still require further statutory instruments to be approved, the changes affecting the law in respect of Industrial action ballots and notice to employers and the legislative changes to picketing where lawful industrial action takes place will come into effect from 1st March 2017.

Accordingly it has been necessary for the NEC to urgently review all of the relevant policies, procedures and guidance to ensure that we remain compliant once the amended legislation as it is introduced. Attached to this LTB is a copy of the revised CWU Industrial Action guidance which was endorsed by the NEC on 23rd February 2017.

The revised policies and procedures therefore come into effect from 1st March 2017 to coincide with the requirements of the new legislation.

The policies and procedures have been designed to make sure that we do everything possible to ensure that we act within the law whilst maintaining the essential trade union principle that allows our members to exercise their legal right to take lawful industrial action when required to do so to protect their jobs, terms & conditions and where employers act unreasonable or breach the agreements that the union has negotiated to improve our members working lives.

Clearly the latest changes being introduced as part of the Trade Union Act 2016 to the already very restrictive legislation are once again aimed at putting even more obstacles in the way of trade unions and we will continue to campaign against this unnecessary legislation with a view to seeing the act repealed. However until this happens we must continue to comply with the law.

We must also take this opportunity to again point out that the law regarding industrial action and picketing is very complex and we will need to continue to keep this matter under constant review. It will be our intention to produce further guidance once the legislation has gone through a “settling in” period and more importantly once the legal system has deliberated the almost certain series of challenges and injunctions that we believe will inevitable arise after changes to industrial action law such as these.

It is also very important to stress that whilst we have made every effort to ensure that the explanations contained in the CWU industrial action and picketing policies, procedures and guidance comply with the legislation they should not be seen as a legal opinion as it only the courts can give authoritative interpretation of the law. The latter is a point emphasised by government in the relevant code of practice documents they issued.

Alongside the General Secretary, it is our intention to call a briefing for all branches and Senior Officials to provide further explanations on the revised policies, procedures and guidance and our ongoing strategy for dealing with this issue. We are currently working on the details of the briefing and once suitable venues and dates have been identified then we will issue further information to branches.

Any enquiries regarding this Letter to Branches should be addressed to the Senior Deputy General Secretary’s Department on telephone number 020 8971 7237, or email address sdgs@cwu.org.

Yours sincerely,



TONY KEARNS

SENIOR DEPUTY GENERAL SECRETARY