The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has upheld a UK law preventing so-called ‘sympathy strikes’, which have been banned by UK legislation since the early 1990s.
Sympathy strikes generally take place when workers take action against a different employer out of solidarity for employees in another group or organisation.
In this case transport union the RMT complained to the European Court that the law prohibiting secondary industrial action breached article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the freedom of assembly and association.
The union’s complaint concerned a dispute between two rail maintenance companies, Hydrex and Jarvis. When 20 Jarvis employees were transferred to Hydrex, their terms and conditions were reduced to the same level as other Hydrex employees so they went on strike.
However, the small number of striking workers meant that the strike was considered ineffective, so, knowing that the two firms still had a close relationship, the RMT wanted to organise a secondary strike by Jarvis to increase pressure on Hydrex, but UK law prevented it from doing so.
Three of the judges in the European Court noted that secondary strikes were not directly relevant to the rights or interests of those engaged in direct strike action. Furthermore, the court was satisfied that the ban pursued the legitimate aim of protecting the rights and freedoms of others, including the employer involved in the dispute and the wider public.
The court summed by saying that the ban in the case of Hydrex and Jarvis “had not disclosed an unjustified interference with the union’s right to freedom of association” and that there was no basis to consider it disproportionate.
From an employer’s perspective, this means that it continues to be fair to dismiss an employee who takes part in unlawful industrial action but there are concerns in Europe that the UK’s laws go too far, so there is likely to be pressure on the Government to modify them.