NUJ loses High Court recognition fight
The National Union of Journalists in Britain today lost its High Court battle for recognition at Mirror Group Newspapers’ various sports division titles, including the Racing Post.
The Central Arbitration Committee, which handles trade union recognition, ruled the NUJ could not represent the sports journalists because a rival, breakaway union, the British Association of Journalists, had already entered into a collective bargaining agreement with their employers.
The NUJ challenged the decision as “unjust”, saying that there were about 130 journalists working on the Racing Post, and about 120 of them had signed a petition rejecting the BAJ.
John Hendy QC, appearing for the NUJ, told Mr Justice Hodge that the CAC had found that, at most, the BAJ had only ever had one member in MGN’s sports division.
But MGN’s sports staff were being denied representation by “the union of their choice” on the basis that an agreement “was already in force”.
Mr Hendy said the CAC itself had expressed concern that there was a lacuna, or gap, in the law which had allowed the employers to defeat the workforce’s wishes “by the simple expedient of concluding a voluntary agreement with a wholly unrepresentative union”.
Rejecting the challenge, the judge ruled that, according to law, the BAJ agreement with the MGN employers had to stand and the NUJ’s challenge dismissed.
The judge said the CAC decision was “neither wrong in law nor perverse” and it had correctly decided the NUJ application was “inadmissible”.
He said: “The effect has been that a trade union with a substantial number of members who are workers in a particular bargaining unit has been shut out from entering into collective bargaining on their behalf by a voluntary agreement entered into between the employer and another union with a very limited membership.
“Whether this apparent lacuna, as the CAC described it, needs to be addressed will be a matter for the industrial and Parliamentary process – not for this court. I dismiss this application.”
