- Ryan v Cooke and Quinn

• Jurisdiction: Ireland
• Judgment Date: 30 May 1938
• Date: 30 May 1938
• Docket Number: (1937. No. 527 P.)
• Court: High Court

- Ryan

and

Cooke and Quinn

- Employees refusing to join trade union - Refusal of employer to coerce employees to join trade union - Whether such refusal involves a trade dispute - Picketing of premises - Injunction - Trade Disputes Acts,1906 (6 Ed. 7, c. 47), ss. 2, 3 and 5.

Section 2 (1) of the Trade Disputes Act, 1906, enacts: —"It shall be lawful for one or more persons acting on their own behalf or on behalf of a trade union or of an individual employer or firm in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute, to attend at or near a house or place where a person resides or works or carries on business or happens to be, if they so attend merely for the purpose of peacefully obtaining or communicating information, or of peacefully persuading any person to work or abstain from working." Plaintiff carried on business as a creamery retailer in a number of shops in Dublin, including one in H. Street. None of her assistants were members of any trade union. The defendants, on behalf of a trade union, sought and obtained permission from her to canvass her assistants to become members of the said trade union. Letters were written by the union to her assistants inviting them to join the trade union, and forms of application for membership of the union were distributed to them. Notwithstanding these efforts no member of the plaintiff's staff joined the trade union. Four letters were then written by the trade union to the plaintiff asking her for an assurance that she would only employ trade union labour and would observe trade union conditions, and stating that failure to give the required assurance would lead to the placing of a picket at her premises in H. Street. No reply was made by the plaintiff to these letters, and a picket was placed at her said premises The members of the picket carried banners or posters inscribed as follows: "This firm refuses to employ trade...