Opinion: The dynamics have changed: the right to strike at the ILO

Abstract

OPINION ❐ THE RIGHT TO STRIKE WITHIN THE ILO SYSTEM ment’ in the operations of the supervisory procedures , namely the procedures of the Committee on Freedom of Association, and on Articles 24 and 26 of the ILO Constitution; and the Standards Review Mechanism, which is a process already underway concerning coherence and relevance of ILO standards. The Joint Statement was signed off by both parties, and is in force until November 2016, with provision for its renewal or cancellation , depending on its implementation. In practice, this should mean that Employers have signed up to a peace agreement that ought to allow the next two sessions of the ILO Conference (June 2015 and 2016) to proceed without interruption. But above and beyond this formality we have such a widespread sense of relief that it now seems unthinkable that the Employers could be taken seriously in any attempt to resurrect their main earlier lines of argument. The contribution of Governments to the debate Prior to the issue of the Joint Statement it had been widely believed that Governments would be key to deciding how the long-running saga would play out, holding, as they did, the balance of voting power on the question of whether or not any reference ought to be made to the ICJ. This deciding role was to some extent taken away from Governments when the Joint Statement emerged, but it would by no means be accurate to say that Governments were thus sidelined from the meeting. Rather they took the opportunity to expound, at some length, on the broad theme of the fundamental importance of the right to strike. In a move that was almost as unexpected as had been the about-turn the Employers had just engaged in, Governments now stood in turn and clearly announced their commitment to the fundamental nature of the right to strike. One after another, Government speakers affirmed the centrality of the right to strike under international law, insisted on the vitality of the right under various national and regional legal systems, firmly located the right within the ILO system, and even directly affirmed that the right to strike is a core component of ILO Convention 87. Workers had asked Governments to come to their aid to protect a fundamental principle but the response was just stunning. Only a handful of Government speakers couched their language in polite diplomatic phrases that affirmed relatively little, but even they did not speak out against the Workers’ position. And the great majority of Government speakers gave a stunning endorsement to the right to strike, quite beyond what Workers had hoped to imagine they might deliver. Just a handful of extracts from The dynamics have changed: the right to strike at the ILO At the ILO in February 2015 Government after Government took the floor to insist that the right to strike is a fundamental right, protected within the ILO INTERNATIONAL union rights Page 16 Volume 22 Issue 1 2015 DANIEL BLACKBURN is Director of the International Centre for Trade Union Rights in London and Editor of International Union Rights journal I n a dazzling about turn, Employers representatives at a specially convened meeting of the ILO in Geneva last month threw in the towel after 32 months of argument with Workers over the existence of the right to strike within the ILO system. The meeting, ostensibly a discussion on ‘the right to strike and the modalities and practices of strike action at national level’, was widely tipped as a last-ditch attempt for Employers and Workers to reach agreement without the requirement for a formal reference to be made to the International Court of Justice. Although Workers had been lobbying hard for Government support for many months, and were expressing quiet confidence about the growing levels of support for their position (which was in favour of such a reference to the ICJ), no-one seems to have noticed the levels of jitteriness that the Employers lobby was experiencing, prior to their surprise announcement on the opening morning. Although it must be noted that the Employers do still formally insist that the central argument remains open enough nails seem to have been hammered into its coffin by...