Supreme Court hands down judgment in appeal concerning the Rectification of Collective Agreements

The Supreme Court has handed down judgment in National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers & anor (Respondents) v Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Executive t/a Nexus (Appellant) [2024] UKSC 37.

This appeal raised important questions about the power of a court or employment tribunal to rectify a collective agreement. The Supreme Court unanimously held (para. 24) that:

1. a collective agreement which is incorporated into the employment contracts of individual workers may be rectified even if the collective agreement is conclusively presumed not to have been intended by the parties to be a legally enforceable contract (pursuant to s. 179 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992);
2. it is not necessary, if a relevant mistake is alleged to have been made in the drafting of such a collective agreement, to sue for rectification on the individual contracts of employment; and
3. the proper defendants to such an action are the individual workers whose legal rights are affected.

In so holding, the Supreme Court overturned findings to the contrary (in respect of principles (1) and (2) above) by the Court of Appeal but agreed with the Court of Appeal that the action should be dismissed on the ground that the individual workers were not parties to the proceedings.

The Supreme Court’s decision also clarifies that an employment tribunal does not have power to order rectification on a complaint of unauthorised deductions from wages under Part II of the Employment Rights Act 1996, the relief which a tribunal may grant on such a complaint being limited to that set out in the statute. Nonetheless, a tribunal may entertain a defence to a wages claim that the relevant document should be “treated for the purpose of determining the parties’ legal rights as rectified without a formal order for rectification” (para. 82).

David Reade KC and Joseph Bryan, instructed by Addleshaw Goddard LLP, acted for Nexus.

The judgment of the Supreme Court is available here.