FES BRIEFING The Right to Strike Struck Down? A Global Survey of Recent Trends EDLIRA XHAFA May 2016 Introduction The right to strike is under attack. Incidences of strikes being suspended, sanctioned or prohibited by new laws are reported in a growing number of countries. Workers and their unions are fighting on various fronts to obtain, protect and defend their right to strike. On the interna­tional level, the International Labour Organisation(ILO) is at the core of this fight. At the 2012 International La ­bour Conference(ILC), the Employers’ Group challenged the existence of an internationally recognised right to strike protected by ILO Convention No. 87. The contro­versy that followed has effectively weakened the most established international mechanism for bringing viola­tions of the right to strike to the attention of a global audience. This motivated the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) to conduct a global survey to assess to what ex­tent this non-resolved controversy at international level corresponds with challenges to the right to strike at na­tional level. The intention of the survey was to identify trends and patterns of violations of the right to strike in countries across the globe, with a particular focus on the past 5 years(from 2012 to 2016). The survey identi­fies and measures the extent of violations, i. e. restric ­tions beyond the limits established by the ILO supervi­sory bodies, in the existing legal frameworks as well as in practice. 1 This briefing paper provides some of the 1. The survey questionnaire adopted the list of violations of the right to strike constructed by David Kucera and Dora Sari as applied in the Labor Rights Indicator Project of the Global Labour University and the Center for Global Workers’ Rights at Penn State University(http://labour-rights­indicators.la.psu.edu/). The framework for the analysis of the survey re­sults, that is the reported violations, is based on Gernigon et al.’s paper »ILO principles concerning the right to strike«(1998). The survey questionnaire, which was fielded between 1 March and 21 April 2016 in four languages(Arabic, French, English and Spanish) was completed by 85 national respondents in 59 countries(Argentina, Aus­tralia, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroun, Canada, China, Colombia, DR Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji, Germany, initial key findings of the survey, which indicate a clear trend towards increasing violations of the right to strike. Main Survey Findings The overall survey findings show that 41 new violations in law and / or case-law have been registered over the last five years in 21 of the 69 countries covered. These countries are Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, Canada(Saskatchewan, Ontario and Quebec), DR Con­go, Ecuador, Egypt, Estonia, Fiji, Guatemala, Indonesia (Jakarta), Italy, Mauritania, Niger, Romania, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, Vietnam and Zimbabwe. These 41 recent cases of violations, however, are to be understood in a context of widespread existing cases of violations(129) of the right to strike in law and / or case­law in the selected areas of violations(Figure 1). This figure indicates that(a) the right to strike is severely cur ­tailed in a vast number of countries surveyed, and often has been for a long time already;(b) there is a noticeable trend that restrictions that violate ILO principles and ju­risprudence in the right to strike are being introduced in countries across regions, independent of their economic development status. While a general prohibition of the right to strike is ab­sent in the legal framework in the surveyed countries, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mauritania, Mexico, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Palestine, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Senegal, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Uganda, UK, USA, Vietnam, Zambia and Zimbabwe) and one regional respondent covering another 10 Latin American countries(Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and Paraguay), bringing the total number of countries covered by this survey to 69, with a third being OECD countries. Trade unions make up the majority(84 percent) of respondents and the remainder are experts from labour-related institutions, academics and labour practitioners.