Definitive Report - Report No 30, 1960

1. 101. The complaint of the Union of Skilled Engineers (U.S.E) is contained in a communication dated 23 June 1958. On 1 July 1958, the Director-General wrote to the complainant inviting him to furnish further information in substantiation of the complaint and, in accordance with the procedure prescribed in cases in which no real information is available concerning the authors of a complaint, requested him at the same time to furnish information concerning the Constitution and rules of his organisation, its membership, the composition of its executive committee and its affiliation with any international organisation of workers. On 8 July 1958 the complainant replied accordingly. The Government of the United Kingdom forwarded its observations on the complaint in a letter dated 7 August 1958.
   • Preliminary Question as to the Receivability of the Complaint
2. 102. In reply to the Director-General's request for information concerning his organisation, the signatory of the complaint, styling himself " national organiser ", explains that he himself founded the union in 1955 and that it now has 37 members. He forwards a copy of the " draft rules "; there is provision for union elections when the membership reaches 1,000. In the meantime, pro tem area committees, originally appointed by the founder, are functioning. The union purports to have a registered office.
3. 103. Under the procedure laid down by the Governing Body for the examination of complaints of infringements of freedom of association, the only complaints receivable, with the exception of those officially transmitted to the I.L.O by the General Assembly or the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, are those which come either from organisations of workers or employers or from governments. When the Committee defined the criteria which it considered appropriate to guide it when carrying out the terms of its mandate -criteria subsequently approved by the Governing Body-it formulated the principle that it would exercise its discretion in deciding whether or not a body should be regarded as an industrial association for the purpose of the Constitution of the I.L.O and would not consider itself bound by any national definition of this term.
4. 104. In the present case the Committee observes that the complaining organisation presents a number of unusual features. Its rules apparently are still draft rules, the national organiser was its individual founder and himself appointed acting officers and, by reason of its small membership, no elections of officers have taken place. On the other hand it purports to have a registered office and has existed for some three years. Although the facts mentioned above were set forth in the complainant's communication of 8 July 1958, a copy of which was transmitted to the Government, the latter has not seen fit to make any comment on the " industrial association " status of the complaining organisation. The Committee must clearly scrutinise very closely unusual features of the type which characterise the complaining organisation before deciding to regard its allegations as receivable or to ascribe much weight to them. In the present case the Committee has had serious doubts as to whether an organisation which appears to be still in process of formation should be regarded as an industrial association entitled to lodge a complaint, but, in view of the fact that the present allegations are confined to matters directly touching certain members of the organisation in process of formation, the Committee could not feel certain that justice would be done if it declined to examine the substance of the complaint.

A. A. The complainants' allegations

• Allegations relating to Anti-Union Discrimination
  105. 105 According to the complaining organisation one of its members, Mr. L. C. Huntley, was dismissed by his employers in Leeds, in October 1957, because he was not a member of the Amalgamated Engineering Union. This is accompanied by an apparently contradictory statement that he was forced to join the A.E.U in order to keep his job. It is alleged that Mr. L. E. Smith, another member, employed by the South Durham Iron and Steel Co., was also forced similarly to join the A.E.U, and that a third member, Mr. R. Kind, employed by an aircraft company, was intimidated by the A.E.U, which wished to make him join the A.E.U and resign from the Union of Skilled Engineers. The Government contends that the alleged intimidation of Mr. Kind and the pressure claimed to have been brought to bear on the employers by the A.E.U with a view to causing them to dismiss or otherwise prejudice the two other members named unless they joined the A.E.U, which apparently they were forced to do, do not constitute infringements of Article 1 of the Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining Convention, 1949, because that Article cannot be invoked in order to protect one union against another.
  106. 106 Both the Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention, 1948 (No. 87) and the Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining Convention, 1949 (No. 98) have been ratified by the United Kingdom.
  107. 107 Article 1 of the latter Convention provides that workers shall enjoy adequate protection against acts of anti-union discrimination in respect of their employment and, in particular, acts calculated to cause the dismissal of or otherwise prejudice a worker by reason of union membership.