EXTENDED SUMMARY

The principle of union freedom requires certain rights such as right to organize, right to collective bargaining, and right to strike. All these rights cannot be separable from each other and they are, as a whole, vital elements in order to provide the realization of the principle mentioned above since right to strike is also an essential and functional tool for union freedom. When this right does not exist or in a situation at which it cannot be applied, union freedom cannot be fully realized. Thus, The Committee on Freedom of Association (CFA), one of the supervisory bodies of the International Labour Organization (ILO), has also admitted the significant role of this right with some favorable arguments including extension of the right to strike in international labour law.

Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize Convention (Convention No 87) and Right to Organize and Collective Bargaining Convention (Convention No 98) are the main documents for CFA, and since its first decision, CFA has considered the right to strike as an integral part of freedom of association. Tough there is not any mention to the right to strike in Conventions No.87 and No 98, and other ILO conventions, CFA has accepted the right to strike within the scope of the principle of union freedom and considered it among the rights guaranteed by the ILO conventions. CFA has also dealt with some problems about right to strike that emerged with the current developments in labour relations.

CFA has examined over 3400 cases since its establishment and a significant number of these cases are very related to the right to strike. CFA examined all kinds of complaints about the conflicts and interventions that may occur during the strike process such as the general principles of the strike, the purposes of the strike, the types of strikes, the suspension and ban of strikes, the illegal declaration of the strike, the intervention of the public authorities, and hiring workers during a strike. As we mentioned above, all kinds of issues that may occur about right to strike are within the scope of CFA.

CFA has already decided on the various complaints and these decisions consist of the main sources for the jurisprudence, too. In the study, most of the decisions, especially the ones which are closely related with the delays or the bans of strikes, public servants’ right to strike, and so on examined.

CFA has formulated the criterion which refers that “the strike poses a clear and imminent danger to the life, personal safety or health of all or a portion of the population” when reviewing the suspensions or bans of strikes. In other words CFA has developed two different concepts for suspensions or bans of strike. The first one is what it is called as “essential services” and includes the following sectors such as hospital sector, electricity services, water supply services, the telephone service, the police and the armed forces, the fire-fighting services, public or private prison services, the provision of food to pupils of school age and the cleaning of schools, and air traffic control. On the contrary, the second is composed of a huge number of sectors, and among them, radio and television, the petroleum sector and oil facilities, distribution of fuel to ensure that flights continue to operate, the gas sector, ports, banking, the metal and mining sectors, insurance services, transportation including metropolitan transport, airline pilots, rail services, construction, car manufacturing, the education sector, airports with the exception of air traffic control, pharmacies, and the glass industry can be considered as the most prominent ones. In this context, CFA it is very clear that CFA has tried to protect and also to expand the right to strike as much as possible. Moreover CFA has developed another jurisprudence which is specifically related with civil servants’ right to strike. Accordingly to CFA, the right to strike may only be restricted or prohibited on the condition that public servants exercise authority in the name of the State.

One of the most important point is that CFA has never an aim to limit the exercise of the right to strike to ​​collective bargaining process. In other words, for CFA, strike cannot be thought as an industrial action which is only used at the end of the bargaining process and if this process does not manage to resolve the conflicts between the workers and employers. According to CFA, strike is a democratic tool which is very useful for workers and their organizations in expressing their objections to economic and social matters affecting their members’ interests in a broader context. This shows us CFA has interpreted the right to strike in a broader manner, too. CFA argued that only the strikes which has a purely political nature can be restricted. For CFA, as long as they are peaceful, certain types of strike such as wild-cat strikes, tools-down, go-slow, working to rule, and sit-down must never be banned or postponed. And as a final point we should state that CFA has taken some decisions against the legal regulations bringing restrictions on sympathy strikes, secondary boycotts, and industrial action and has declared all those exercises are contrary to Convention No. 87.