Gchq - Restoration Of Trade Union Rights

EDM number 387 in 1996-97, proposed by Alan Meale on 14/01/1997.

That this House applauds the decision by Ted Whybrew, the Certification Officer for Trade Unions and Employers Associations, not to grant a certificate of independence to the Government Communications Staff Federation; welcomes the vindication of the views of those trade unions and workers who for so long have opposed the ban on trade unions at GCHQ; notes and supports those counts on which the GCSF's application foundered, namely that the officers of the GCSF are subject to disciplinary and other decisions by its management, are not free to affiliate, merge with or recruit from elsewhere and contest their conditions of service without risking expulsion, have limited access to industrial tribunals with industrial action being effectively banned and finally that the GCSF's continuation as a representative functioning body is 80 per cent. reliant upon funding by management; and calls on the Government finally to accept that the ban is in contravention of ILO Convention 87, contrary to natural justice and, as such, fundamentally wrong, to admit their error and make immediate amends by restoring in full Trade Union rights to GCHQ employees and to reinstate those workers previously unjustly dismissed from their employment.

This motion has been signed by a total of 189 MPs, 1 of these signatures have been withdrawn.