RMT held a ballot for a strike but hadn’t balloted a large proportion of the staff because the union had misclassified their pay grades, sent ballot papers to the wrong address, or wrongly suspected that they were in arrears. CA granted an injunction against the strike, holding that the duty in s.230(2) TULRCA that every person entitled to vote in a ballot should "so far as [was] reasonably practicable" have a voting paper sent to him, was not complied with: the union should have kept an updated record of members’ levels of seniority and addresses.
Schiemann LJ: “the broad aim of the legislation is to secure a situation in which those who will actually be induced to take industrial action have the opportunity to take part in the ballot which authorises that action”.
