Court cancels the right to picket
By Herb Thompson
PERTH — In a case with far-reaching implications, the Builders Labourers' Federation in Western Australia has been found to have breached Section 45D of the Trade Practices Act, which protects parties unrelated to a dispute.
Justice French found in Federal Court on December 9 that a BLF picket line hindered and prevented suppliers from entering a site. The union now faces a damages pay-out to the Perth building company J-Corp.
The BLF set the picket line up on a housing site on July 27 for nine days. While building companies and suppliers refused to cross the picket line, Justice French found that, in all but one case, the union did not threaten or ask them not to enter the site.
But he found that the establishment and maintenance of the picket line involved an implied direction that it should not be crossed. It also involved an implied threat of unspecified sanctions in the event that it was crossed. While the threat of sanctions remains, even though unspoken, the possibility of characterising the use of the picket as a hindering or prevention of supply is also present.
The BLF has submitted an official request to the ACTU and WA Trades and Labor Council to back an appeal. It is clear that the court decision can affect all trade unions and unionists, in that it makes any picket line a violation of the Trade Practices Act. The only way a picket could stay outside the reach of the law is for the picketers literally to invite others to cross.
This decision is yet another in a long line of court rulings during the past six years which have tied workers up in litigious knots.
BLF state secretary Kevin Reynolds showed a degree of naivety when he expressed surprise at the lack of consistent rules within bourgeois law. He pointed out that no matter how hard workers try to abide by the law, the employers always find "a new law to belt you with". Who would have thought employers could be so mean in the age of consensus?