The Demise of the `Voluntarist Exclusion Zone?’

Douglas Brodie

Industrial Law Journal, 2025, vol. 54, issue 1, 171-184

Abstract: In Secretary of State for the Environment v PCSU [2024] UKSC 41the Supreme Court had to consider whether a trade union was entitled to sue on a provision derived from a collective agreement by virtue of the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.1 The relevance of the presumption in s. 179 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 to collectively agreed obligations which are incorporated in an employment contract was at the heart of the litigation. The Supreme Court found in favour of the trade union and this well prove beneficial to unions in future cases centring on third party rights. I would suggest that the decision also has significant implications for cases on incorporation of collectively agreed terms. It is also conceivable that the debate as to the merits of direct enforcement of collective agreements will be reopened.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/indlaw/dwaf003 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:indlaw:v:54:y:2025:i:1:p:171-184.

Access Statistics for this article

Industrial Law Journal is currently edited by Professor Simon Deakin

More articles in Industrial Law Journal from Industrial Law Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().