An employee cannot complain that he or she has been refused time off for trade union duties unless it is established that a request for time off was made which came to the notice of the employer's appropriate representative, and that they either refused it, ignored it or failed to respond to it, holds the EAT in Ryford Ltd v Drinkwater.
In Hairsine v Kingston-upon-Hull City Council, the EAT holds that a trade union official's right to paid time off work for training is limited to those hours when the employee would normally be at work. If the training course falls outside those hours, the employee is not entitled to paid time off "in lieu" during his or her contractual working hours.
An industrial tribunal was entitled to find that, in the circumstances of this case, lobbying of Parliament was not a trade union activity entitling union members to time off.