Bruce Carr QC acts for Secretary of State as PCS withdraws threatened Olympic strike
Minutes before the hearing of an application by the Home Secretary for an injunction to restrain the planned strike of Home Office staff on 26 July, the PCS announced that it was withdrawing its proposed industrial action.
Bruce Carr QC was instructed by Treasury Solicitors on behalf of the Secretary of State to make the urgent application for an injunction after the PCS announced that it was calling on its members to take strike action on the eve of the opening ceremony of the London Olympics. The strike would have covered Border Agency staff on what is expected to be the busiest day in Heathrow’s history with an anticipated 127,000 passengers arriving. Any strike action would therefore have been likely to create major problems for travellers into all of London’s airports.
The application was to have centred on the extent to which the PCS had properly complied with the provisions of sections 226A and 234A Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 under which it was obliged to supply to the Home Office information from which it could deduce the numbers, categories and workplaces of those taking part in the original ballot and the subsequent call for industrial action. In particular, the question was whether the PCS had led the Home Office to believe that overseas workers were to be included in the ballot and the industrial action in circumstances in which the union maintained that it had not sought to include them.
This case has received significant news coverage, a selection of which can be found at:
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