STRIKE LAWS

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32018, 19 June 1969, Page 17

STRIKE LAWS

Compromise Suggested (N.Z.P.A.-Reuter— Copyright) LONDON, June 18. The British Minister of Productivity and Employment (Mrs Barbara Castle) has presented the Cabinet with a face-saving alternative to the Government’s proposed legislation on unofficial strikes, according to wellinformed sources in London. The Trades Union Congress, which groups most of Britain’s trade unions, had earlier this month given an unqualified “no” to the Government’s plans which would have penalised workers for wildcat strikes. When the Cabinet met yesterday to discuss the final form of the bill, Mrs Castle apparently presented a new formula which abandoned the principle of penalising individual workers for unofficial walk-outs.

According to reliable sources the new formula allows for court action to enforce industrial agreements once they are broken—considerable retreat from the original proposals. Political observers say the Cabinet Ministers would seize on the new proposal as a happy alternative to a measure which threatened to split the Government’s ranks and attract a barrage of criticism from the trade unions that, traditionally, give their support to the Labour Party.