Editorial: the right to strike

Abstract

INTERNATIONAL union rights Page 2 Volume 21 Issue 4 2014 IUR ❐ EDITORIAL Editorial: the right to strike T his edition of IUR returns to the theme of the right to strike just 18 months since we covered this very subject in IUR 20.2. The reason for this rapid recycling of the theme is that the right to strike – which our Guest Editor Sandra Vermuyten calls ‘the only effective democratic right’ available to workers in persistent conflict situations – has been under sustained attack throughout this time. Attacks on the right to strike are apparent in the international human rights system due to an ongoing argument raised by the Employers Group within the ILO. In an article looking back over the past two years I outline developments in the ongoing dispute at ILO, while Ruwan Subasinghe of the ITF says that the Employers are trying ‘to undermine the authority of the ILO’s supervisory mechanisms’ and concludes that ‘there can be no compromise on the right to strike’. While the process of negotiation and the struggle to gather support for an application to the International Court of Justice has not provided any quick fixes it does now appear that the Workers have commitment to finding a clear legal resolution to the problem, they are now strongly backing a reference to be made to the ICJ, with Employers so far resisting this solution, and Governments divided. Outside the ILO the right to strike is also under attack as Jesús Gallego of Spain and Jan Buelens and Joke Callewaert of Belgium tell us from what is starting to look increasingly like an anti-democratic crack down on key forms of social participation . There seems to be a movement, Buelens and Callewaert argue, ‘to deter people from taking part in social action and frighten them’. Such deterrents include excessive violence or the threat of it, but are accompanied by an ideological campaign that seeks to portray strikes and demonstrations not as expressions of popular democratic social participation but rather as forms of insidious dissent, even casting the vocalisation of criticism as ‘practically criminal’. In Spain a similar process is underway, though it appears to be more greatly entrenched: the Government, Gallego tells us, is ‘criminalising the right to strike and to demonstrate’. Threatening sentences are being passed against pickets and trade unionists face ‘sentences aiming at discouraging workers from mobilising’. Also in this edition Pascal Lokiec returns to expand on a theme he has previously raised with IUR, that of the far-reaching transformations occurring in French labour law and industrial relations in which the focus is moving away from an industrial relations system ‘based on State interventionism’ towards a more adaptable system of deregulation and individualisation that is ultimately posing a ‘severe’ challenge for unions. And also returning to an issue he has raised before in these pages is Dave Smith who exposes yet another murky layer in the scandalous blacklisting episode in which the employment prospects of thousands and thousands of construction workers were scuppered after an industry associated body recorded their involvement with trade union and labour movement activities. We are also pleased to feature a report from Jeremy Anderson of the ITF, who gives us an insight into how global unions are studying how labour rights are handled across complex supply chains in which products move through sorting hubs, warehousing operations, and docks, involving more than a dozen different groups of transport workers as the travel across the globe. And finally Steve Grinter, formerly of the ITGLWF, updates us on the efforts that have been made over the past two years to address safety and union rights in the garment sector of Bangladesh. Daniel Blackburn, Editor Next issue of IUR Articles between 850 and 1,900 words should be sent by email (mail@ictur.org) and accompanied by a photograph and short biographical note of the author. Photographs illustrating the theme of articles are always welcome. All items must be with us by 20 February 2015 if they are to be considered for publication in the next issue of IUR. Subscribe to IUR: to subscribe, complete the box below. I/we would like to subscribe to International Union Rights...