Picketing row brews in U.K.

Press, 22 July 1980, Page 8

Picketing row brews in U.K.

NZPA London 1 Pickets may give way to computers as the main weapons of trade unions, the British businessman’s magazine, the “Director,” has said. The warning comes in the wake of the disclosure by the Employment Secretary (Mr James Prior) in a TV interview that a Government code of practice to follow enactment of the Employment Bill may recommend limiting the number of pickets at any one site to six. Questioned on Granada’s TV programme, “Union Power,” Mr Prior agreed that large numbers on picket lines were intimidatory.

“We felt that it would be wrong to write numbers into i the act,”,, he said. It would ' be far better put into a code • of practice. ; “We shall be consulting ‘ on a code of practice which will include a figure, and the ! .figure we have in mind is 1 six.” As union leaders protested at his remarks, the “Direct- 1 or” said that unions could paralyse the nerve centre of a company simply by calling out computer operators. “The work force need not come out on strike and the unions will only have to : fund benefits for the staff of

the computer department,” an article in the July issue stated. “A trade union of dataprocessing personnel would fcj the most powerful group of people in the country. “Flying pickets and violence could be a thing of the past as unions will concentrate on the computer departments of offending firms accused of strike-breaking.” “Flying” pickets, where workers, generally from militant unions, not involved in a strike reinforce picket . lines put up by workers who’ ’ are on strike, have been 1 blarped for much of the vio- ■ lence during industrial dis- ' putes in the last week.

Among Trades Union Congress leaders reacting to Mr Prior’s “code of practice? remarks was Bill Sirs, general secretary of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation... He said that Government plans to limit the number of pickets to six would cause a “workers’ revolt.” There would be “A lot of arrests if it became law.” The T.U.C.’s general secretary (Mr Len Murray) said Mr Prior’s idea was not very bright, new, or sensible. ?The Royal Commission on trade unions considered it and turned it down flat,” he said. '