The Supreme Court judgment in the Nolan Transport case has sent a clear message to employers and trade unions that they should try to resolve their differences outside the courts.
At the same time the outcome will be greeted with a sigh of relief in the trade union movement, which saw the original High Court ruling as one that placed prohibitive conditions on unions involved in disputes.. The chairman of the Irish Small and Medium Enterprises Association, Mr Eoghan Hynes, said yesterday the judgment would "frighten the hell out of small businesses which are not used to dealing with trade unions".
The Nolan dispute was one which should not have happened. An angry reaction by the company to some of its drivers joining SIPTU, and the union's belief that the men had been sacked, led to a bitter five-year row about union recognition.
Welcoming the result yesterday the president of SIPTU, Mr Jimmy Somers, said the court had unanimously held that a legitimate trade dispute existed, and it accepted that the union had a right to seek the reinstatement of workers it believed had been sacked.
The court also accepted that the union was not trying to take all the drivers into membership, as had been found in the High Court judgment of June 1994. Mr Somers particularly welcomed the Supreme Court finding that employers had an obligation to accord trade unions a measure of respect.
Nolan Transport had won £601,000 against SIPTU in the High Court on the basis that there were serious irregularities in the ballot which preceded the strike in 1993.
The chief executive of Nolan Transport (Oaklands) Ltd, Ms Patricia Nolan, said: "I find it difficult to understand the decision of the Supreme Court. Mr Justice Barron in the High Court found that the ballot for strike action was rigged by the union and the Supreme Court upheld his findings of fact."
She also cited the Supreme Court judgment of Mr Justice Murphy yesterday, criticising the ballot procedures. "Despite all that, we have no remedy at law because the union has complete immunity for its actions under the current legislation."
The court found that even if a union conducts an irregular strike ballot it can still claim immunity, under the 1990 Industrial Relations Act, from claims for damages by employers. The only proviso is that the union is pursuing a legitimate goal and has embarked on the dispute in good faith.
The judgment does not affect the right of employers to seek injunctions against unions which fail to conduct proper ballots, serve adequate strike notice or allow pickets to get out of hand. While the Supreme Court said unions were immune from damages, it also said they had an obligation to conduct ballots to a high standard.
Many trade unionists questioned the judgment of SIPTU, the country's largest union, in challenging the original High Court decision.
SIPTU was found to have acted in bad faith, rigged a strike ballot and issued defamatory statements about the company in an attempt to force it to recognise the union. Nolan Transport was awarded £400,000 for lost profits, £176,000 for additional fuel costs due to the dispute and £25,000 for defamation and malicious falsehoods.
If SIPTU had lost the Supreme Court appeal, it could well have been facing a bill in excess of £2 million.
On the other hand, the issues affected the way trade unions do their business in such a fundamental way that SIPTU could hardly afford not to appeal the original ruling.
The most scathing judgment of the way the dispute was conducted, on both sides, came from Mr Justice O'Flaherty. "Reading through the sorry saga," he said, "I could not but think we were living in another era, at about the turn of the century. We have surely advanced from the culture that then prevailed."