He did not join in the national anthem at a first-world-war commemoration; he opposes the renewal of Britain's nuclear weapons capability; he supports the restoration of many lost powers to trade unions, including secondary picketing, and the nationalisation of the energy industry.
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Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, Local 558 v Pepsi-Cola Canada Beverages (West) Ltd, 2002 SCC 8, is a leading Supreme Court of Canada decision on secondary picketing. The Court held that at common law, secondary picketing is legal so long as there is no criminal or tortious conduct.
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However, the Supreme Court overturned the decision but expressly forbade the picketing of the management's homes. The Court's overall conclusion was that secondary picketing is legal so long as it is not tortious or criminal in nature and does not inflict "undue" hardship on the struck parties.
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"Secondary situs" picketing is similar to secondary boycotts, and was another area in which Farmer led the Board in making significant changes. Under Paul Herzog, the NLRB made two decisions involving secondary picketing. The first, Schulz Refrigeration Service,Schulz Refrigeration Service, 87 NLRB 502 (1949). addressed an issue which had arisen in the transportation industry.
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Employees of PepsiCo ("Pepsi"), organized by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, in Saskatchewan went on strike. Unlike many other provinces, Saskatchewan did not have any secondary picketing legislation. So as part of their strike, the employees picketed at retail stores that sold Pepsi products and the homes of Pepsi's management. Pepsi successfully applied for an interlocutory injunction to prevent employees from picketing at the secondary locations.
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Protesting by labour groups and trade unions have long been recognized as a protected form of expression. There are not many instances of limiting primary picketing. Typically, the debate has been over whether secondary picketing can be restricted; the practice of picketing businesses not directly involved in a labour dispute has in the past been banned under the common law. The most significant decision on limiting primary picketing is British Columbia Government Employees' Union v British Columbia (AG),[1988] 2 SCR 214.
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It is primarily used when only one workplace is being picketed or for a symbolically or practically important workplace. Due to the numbers involved, a mass picket may turn into a potentially unlawful blockade. Secondary picketing is the picketing of locations that are directly connected to the issue of protest. That would include component suppliers on which the picketed business relies, retail stores that sell products by the company against which is being picketed, sister companies of the company involved in the dispute and the private homes of the company's management.
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When Mackay Radio was announced in 1938, unions were allowed to engage in many kinds of secondary activities. Secondary activities are actions directed at businesses and individuals not directly connected to the labor dispute. These include secondary picketing, sympathy strikes, "hot cargo" strikes (continuing to work but refusing to handle products which come from the struck business), secondary boycotts, and picketing of a struck employer's suppliers or customers. The closed shop was also legal at the time, helping unions ensure that only workers who were bound by union rules were hired.
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"Store Picket Ban Issued," Los Angeles Times, June 28, 1938, image 4 The order against this secondary picketing was later made permanent. "Labor Board Opens Hearing in Citizen-News' Guild Strike," Los Angeles Times, July 6, 1938, image 5 The union took the matter to the National Labor Relations Board The strike ended on July 30, 1938, with an agreement between the two sides."Citizen-News Strike Settled," Los Angeles Times, July 31, 1938, image 2 Superior Judge Emmet Wilson, however, ruled that six guild members he had cited for contempt of court must stand trial.
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In many jurisdictions, secondary pickets do not have the same civil law protection as primary pickets. An example of this is the Battle of Saltley Gate in 1972 in Britain, when striking miners picketed a coke works in Birmingham and were later joined by thousands of workers from other industries in the local area. The tactic of secondary picketing was outlawed in the United Kingdom by the Conservative Party government of Margaret Thatcher in the mid-1980s, but the Labour opposition led by Neil Kinnock was pushing for it to be legalised before the 1987 general election. However, such plans had been dropped by the time Labour returned to power under Tony Blair in 1997.
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The Court recognized picketing as freedom of expression, consistent with section 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Since the Court found picketing to be ingrained in the Charter, they declined to limit picketing based on location. The Court felt that the limited financial and human resources of labour unions would prevent the unchecked spread of picketing beyond the primary parties, with limited resources they felt it was unlikely the union would picket a location which has no possible impact on their labour dispute. Pepsi had relied primarily on the Court of Appeal for Ontario decision Hersees of Woodstock Ltd v Goldstein (1963), 2 OR 81 (CA), which held that all secondary picketing was illegal.
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United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 1518 v KMart Canada Ltd, [1999] 2 S.C.R. 1083 is a leading Supreme Court of Canada decision on freedom of expression under section 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Court struck down a provision in the Labour Relations Code of British Columbia, which prohibited strikers from distributing fliers outside of their primary picketing area. The Court held that the provision, which was part of a prohibition on secondary picketing, clearly violated the freedom of expression. The violation could not be saved as the purpose of the prohibition, which was to limit the disruption of those who were not involved in the dispute, was not proportional to the prohibition.
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The granting of injunctions tends to be based on the accusation of intimidation or, in general, on non-peaceful behaviour and the claim that numbers of the picketers are not from the affected workplace. In the United Kingdom, picketing was banned by a Liberal government in the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1871 but then decriminalised by a Conservative government with the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act 1875. In the US, any strike activity was hard to organise in the early 1900s, but picketing became more common after the Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932, which limited the ability of employers to gain injunctions to stop strikes, and further legislation to support the right to organise for the unions. Mass picketing and secondary picketing was however outlawed by the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act.
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After Callaghan returned from a summit conference in the tropics at a time when the hauliers' strike and the weather had seriously disrupted the economy, leading thousands to apply for unemployment benefits, his denial that there was "mounting chaos" in the country was paraphrased in a famous Sun headline as "Crisis? What Crisis?" Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher's acknowledgement of the severity of the situation in a Party Political Broadcast a week later was seen as instrumental to her victory in the general election held four months later after Callaghan's government fell to a no-confidence vote. Once in power, the Conservatives, who under Thatcher's leadership had begun criticising the unions as too powerful, passed legislation, similar to that proposed in a Labour white paper a decade earlier, that barred many practices, such as secondary picketing, that had magnified the effects of the strikes.
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Thatcher, Leader of the Opposition, had been calling for the government to declare a state of emergency to deal with the strike during the first week of January. She also called for the immediate enactment of reforms that "Stepping Stones", and before it In Place of Strife had proposed: a ban on secondary picketing of third-party businesses not targeted directly by a strike, ending closed shop contracts under which employers can only hire those already members of a union, requiring votes by secret ballot before strikes and in the elections of union officials, and securing no-strike agreements with public-sector unions that provided vital public services, such as police, fire, health care and utilities.Martin, 99–100 A week later, as the cold returned and Britons had begun filing claims for unemployment benefit by the thousands, Thatcher addressed the situation in a Party Political Broadcast. From a small sitting room she spoke, she said, not as a politician but as a Briton.
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The Brooklyn Eagle reported the story on the front page, and in an editorial related it to an earlier decision handed down against secondary picketing of its advertisers by ex-employees; the December 20, 1937 issue of Time also mentioned it. The use of the term "unity of interest" in deciding the Goldfinger case was novel and set a precedent. The case was seen as significant in affirming the right of labor to protest peacefully against not only employers, but retailers selling goods produced by employers with whom the union had a grievance, based on the long-term need for a closed shop in order to secure the right of collective bargaining, and also in setting clear boundaries for such protests. It was noted in contemporary analyses that despite the distinction drawn between picketing against a product rather than the retailer selling it (a secondary boycott), New York State was in the vanguard in affirming the rights of unions to use such tactics.
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Prince George Citizen, 12 Mar 1982 The company consolidated all vacation time into a four-week period to shut down the mill for the summer.Prince George Citizen, 17 May 1982 When a five-day week returned in August,Prince George Citizen, 30 Aug 1982 Shelley was the only Northwood mill running with a full staff.Prince George Citizen, 7 Dec 1982 In 1984, two week's secondary picketing of the mill by the Canadian Paperworkers Union, initially had minimal impact in discouraging IWA members and independent truckers from crossing the picket line,Prince George Citizen: 22, 23, & 27 Feb 1984 to 2 Mar 1984 but eventually the mill closed for three days until a court order restrained the picketers.Prince George Citizen: 5 to 9, 12 & 13 Mar 1984 CNR crews honoured the picket, which continued another two weeks.Prince George Citizen: 15 & 20 Mar 1984 Rolling strikes throughout the north during 1986,Prince George Citizen, 30 Jul 1986 which escalated into a four-month province-wide woodworkers' strike, resulted in a moratorium on contracting out work normally performed by union members until a royal commission had studied the issue.Prince George Citizen: 6 Aug 1986, 28 Oct 1986, 28 Nov 1986 & 8 Dec 1986 In 1988, market conditions necessitated a permanent reduction from three to two shifts per day at the mill.
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