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18
May 2009
The European Court of
Human Rights (ECtHR) has told us once more that the UK’s
human rights record is as bad as that of Turkey in relation
to rights of assembly and association. The ECtHR in Strasbourg
seems to be heading in the opposite direction to the EUs own
European Court of Justice, which has crushed trade union and
fundamental collective human rights in favour of business
throughout the EU in the decisions in Viking, Laval, Ruffert
and Luxembourg.
On 21 April, the ECtHR
Judges in the Enerji Yapi-Yol Sen v Turkey case, unanimously
decided the Turkish government’s declaration which effectively
stopped workers going on strike to attend a public meeting,
breached the workers’ fundamental rights.
It follows another recent
case from the Strasbourg court Demir and Baykara v Turkey
on 12 November 2008. The court changed its previous position
and for the first time understood and accepted the right of
workers to form a union to protect their economic and social
rights under Article 11 of the European Convention on Human
Rights and Fundamental Freedoms must carry with it the right
to collective bargaining. It even appears to go further to
say that there is a positive duty on governments to promote
collective bargaining.
The Enerji Yapi-Yol Sen
case takes that one further by adding that a right to strike
is also an integral part of the right of association. We should
not get carried away with this, as there are counter balancing
interests for the Court to take into account, but there is
a lot of potential here.
The United Campaign has
no doubt that the issue of collective fundamental rights is
simple. Economic and social rights are pretty useless without
collective rights. The right to freely associate – that
employers and workers have under the European Convention and
elsewhere – includes the right to form an effective trade
union at least for the protection of economic and social interests.
A trade union that is prevented by national laws from doing
its job is a victim of a breach of human rights – as
are the individual members of the union. A union cannot do
its job if it is prevented from collective bargaining effectively.
It cannot engage in collective bargaining if its member do
not have the right to withdraw their labour.
Meanwhile in the UK, parliaments’
Joint Committee on Human Rights fails to recognise the importance
of collective rights, which we believe is a disgrace.
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