The Supreme Court has allowed an appeal by Unite the Union and three named union members against an interlocutory injunction that had restrained picketing during a dispute over travel-time payments.
H.A. O’Neil Limited, a specialist mechanical engineering firm, obtained the injunction in the High Court in March 2023. It concerned picketing by three employees at sites of third-party properties where the company had building projects. The employees were members of Unite, which holds a negotiating licence under the Trade Union Act 1941.
The judgment records that a secret ballot in favour of industrial action had been held and the required notice given to the employer. The company’s principal argument was that a 2015 Sectoral Employment Order had adapted the employees’ contracts so that they could not lawfully take industrial action until a dispute resolution procedure was exhausted. It argued that the protection against injunctions in section 19(2) of the Industrial Relations Act 1990 therefore did not apply.
The High Court later found the Sectoral Employment Order invalid, and at the appeal hearing the parties accepted that there was no longer a continuing basis for the injunction. The remaining issue was whether the High Court had been entitled to grant interlocutory relief in March 2023 under the law as it was then understood.
In a judgment delivered on 6 March 2024, Mr Justice Gerard Hogan agreed with the analysis of Chief Justice Donal O’Donnell and Mr Justice Peter Murray that section 19(2) meant there was no proper basis for the injunction. He said the appeal should be allowed for the reasons set out in their judgments.
Justice Hogan also observed that peaceful industrial action meeting the statutory requirements is presumptively lawful. He said courts should not readily circumvent the limits Parliament placed on injunctions restraining such action. He did not express a view on whether section 19’s restrictions apply to final injunctions, or on the enforceability of a “no-strike” clause and its effect on the Act’s protections.
The court allowed the appeal. The judgment does not state that it made any further order concerning damages or costs.