Editing Picketing (section)

==Types of picket==
[[Image:Unison strike rally Oxford 20060328.jpg|thumb|A rally of the trade union [[UNISON]] in [[Oxford]] during a strike on March 28, 2006, with members carrying picket signs.]]

'''Informational picketing''' is the legal name given to awareness-raising picketing. Per Merriam-Webster's ''Dictionary of Law'', it entails picketing by a group, typically a labour or trade union, which inform the public about a cause of its concern.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/informational%20picketing?db=legal|title=informational picketing - Reference.com}}</ref> In almost all cases this is a disliked policy or practice of the business or organisation. It is a popular picketing technique for nurses to use outside of healthcare facilities. For example, on April 5, 2006, [[nurse]]s of the UMass Memorial Medical Center ([[UMMHC]]) took part in two separate such events to protect the quality of their nursing program.<ref name="autogenerated9">Twarog, J. "Informational pickets, rallies, vigils and leafleting at health care facilities". ''Massachusetts Nurse'', April 2006, Vol. 77, Issue 3, p. 9<!--, 2/3p --></ref> Informational picketing was used to gain public support and promote further bargaining with management.<ref name="autogenerated9"/> It may also be a spur or auxiliary to a petition to government to seek regulatory intervention, reliefs, dispensations or funds.

A '''mass picket''' is an attempt to bring as many people as possible to a picket line to demonstrate support for the cause. It is primarily used when only one workplace is being picketed or for a symbolically or practically important workplace. Due to the numbers involved, and depending on behaviors, it may turn into an unlawful [[blockade]] such as a right of way obstruction, or aggravated trespass (denial of access).

'''Secondary picketing''' is of any external entity economically connected to the main business subject to the workers' action. Thus it includes against suppliers on which the picketed business relies, retailers who sell its products, physical premises with shared management or majority shareholders (sister/allied premises) and homes of any of the latter persons. For example, at the [[Battle of Saltley Gate]] in 1972 in England, striking miners picketed a [[Coke (fuel)|coke]] works in [[Birmingham]] and were later joined by thousands of workers from industries locally. 
In most jurisdictions, secondary pickets lack all or many of the civil law protections given to primary pickets.

Secondary picketing has been illegal (in the sense that, unlike lawful picketing, it may give rise to a cause of action in [[tort]]) in the [[United Kingdom]] since the coming into force of section 17 of the [[Employment Act 1980]],<ref>{{cite legislation UK |type=act |act=Employment Act 1980 |year=1980 |chapter=42 |section=17}}</ref><ref>Due to successive reforms, secondary picketing is now banned under a law passed after the 1992 general election: {{cite legislation UK |act=Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 |type=act |year=1992 |chapter=52 |section=224}}</ref> a law tabled and passed by the [[Conservative Party (UK)|Conservative]] government of [[Margaret Thatcher]]. [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour]] sought repeal of this via the party's [[1987 United Kingdom general election|1987 manifesto]]; the party called for a debate on such issues in the next (1992) manifesto; and dropped this position under [[Tony Blair]] and later leaders' manifestos from [[1997 United Kingdom general election|1997]] onwards.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/92063414/Hulton-Archive|title=Posters From The Conservative Party Archive}}</ref>

{{anchor|flyingpickets}}Another tactic is to organise highly mobile pickets, who can turn up at any of a business's locations quickly. These '''flying pickets''' are particularly effective against multi-facility businesses that could otherwise pursue legal [[prior restraint]] and shift operations among facilities if the locations were known with certainty ahead of time. The first highly strategic use of such may have been the example of the [[UK miners' strike (1969)|1969 miners' strike in Britain]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Beckett|first=Andy |title=When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies |location=London |publisher=Faber & Faber |year=2009 |page=70 |isbn=9780571252268 }}</ref> Flying pickets are usually not legal in the United Kingdom; workers must only picket at their workplace.<ref>{{cite web |title=Taking part in industrial action and strikes |url=https://www.gov.uk/industrial-action-strikes/going-on-strike-and-picketing |website=[[GOV.UK]] |access-date=27 August 2022}}</ref>

Picketing can interweave with [[boycott]]ing campaigns by [[Advocacy group|pressure group]]s across the political and moral spectrum. In particular, religious groups such as the [[Westboro Baptist Church]] seek to picket local store fronts and events they consider sinful. Non-employee protesters are third parties to the business so counter-actions may lie in the courts (or out-of-court remedies) for disruption of trade, unlawful protest, defamation, and certain types of illegal advertising, trespass and nuisance, against which freedom of expression, of religion and/or a public interest defense vie. Different jurisdictions weigh these two competing sets of rights differently. The global result is that the rules and outcomes are fact-sensitive (rest closely on the actions, form, subject-matter, duration and behaviors) and law-sensitive (divergently regulated or governed by case law).
[[File:WBC_20051202_sacco-topeka5.jpg|thumb|Picketing by [[Westboro Baptist Church|WBC]] in [[Topeka, Kansas|Topeka]], with the group's signature multi-colored picket signs.]]