Trade Union Bill (Third sitting)
Debate between James Cartlidge and Julie Elliott(9 years, 1 month ago)
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Julie Elliott
Q 293 Thank you. Can I clarify one other thing you said? You said that officials of trade unions were tacitly approving the tactics deployed. Can you tell me which trade unions were doing that? We have the general secretaries of the big trade unions involved in your company here later today giving evidence, and we would like to put that to them.
David Palmer-Jones: The ones that I met, together with Merseyside—the customer—were Unite, GMB and UCATT.
James Cartlidge
Q 294 Commissioner Dobson, in your earlier remarks you said that nothing in the Bill will worsen relationships in your view, but there are safeguards in it that will be of benefit. Do you welcome the threshold for action, which is one of the most important parts of the Bill?
Commissioner Dobson: I do welcome it, but it is important for the Committee to recognise that I cannot think of an industrial dispute with the Fire Brigades Union in recent years where that threshold would not have been met, so I do not think it would have had any practical impact on previous disputes.