Trade union rights

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When it comes to violation of fundamental trade union rights, transport workers can be particularly vulnerable. Governments are willing to use a range of anti-union tactics to keep the movement of people and goods flowing.

The international labour standards are quite clear – transport workers have the same trade union rights as workers in other industrial sectors. They have the right to freedom of association and are free to take industrial action.

Yet transport workers can be particularly vulnerable to restrictions on their trade union rights. For example, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has said that it is a serious violation of freedom of association to ban trade unions for international airline employees, public sector employees, and civilian staff in the armed forces. Yet various governments have tried to ban unions in one or another of these categories so as to target the transport sector.

Some governments have tried to outlaw the right to strike specifically for transport unions. Some have argued that the public service is an area where the right to strike should not be automatic. Yet, according to the ILO, employees in state-owned commercial or industrial enterprises must be given the right to strike with only one proviso: “that the interruption of services does not endanger the life, personal safety or health of the whole or part of the population”. The ILO has also said that the concept of public servant “should be limited to public servants exercising authority in the name of the state”.

The ILO does recognise that the right to strike can be restricted or even prohibited by governments in essential services. However, this is only where stoppages would mean a serious threat to life, personal safety or health. Hospital, utilities supply and telephone services can be designated as essential. But in the transport sector, the ILO has identified only air traffic control, when this service is essential to guarantee air safety. In all other areas of transport operation, the strict sense of the term “essential services” does not apply.

The ILO says that back-to-work orders, requisitioning orders, or the hiring of workers to break a strike in any of the sectors not strictly considered essential is a “serious violation of trade union rights”.

Governments have also used minimum services legislation to restrict transport workers’ rights. The ILO says that minimum service levels can be laid down in the event of a strike but only where “life or normal living conditions” are endangered, and trade unions should participate in defining the level of minimum service.

Despite these ILO rulings, governments seem unable to resist classifying many forms of transport – road, rail, sea and air – as “essential services”. They have also used requisitioning orders and excessive minimum services rules. The 2001 Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) gives many examples:

In Ethiopia, the definition of “essential services” under the law includes air transport, railways and buses. In Dominica it is port services, and in Bulgaria the railways that are considered “essential”. Guinea, Mozambique, Panama, Thailand and Vietnam name the whole transport sector as “essential”.
In Manila, Philippines, the government banned a strike by light rail transit workers and dismissed 900 workers. This is despite a court ruling that this type of public transport could not be classified as “essential”.
In Serbia, 12 trade union members were sacked after a strike in December 2000 at the Nis Express Transport Company. In this country, the list of essential services is so long that some 60 per cent of employees are involved.
In Switzerland, a 1927 law included railway workers, as employees of a state enterprise, among those banned from striking. A change to the law in January 2001 means they are no longer state employees and the ban is lifted, though there are still restrictions under their collective agreement. Until recently German workers too were classified as “civil servants” and hence not permitted to strike but the law has now been revised.
In Quebec, Canada, the right to strike is limited by a very broad definition of essential services. In November 2000, the Quebec authorities ordered truck drivers in Montreal back to work after they had gone on strike to demand that their employer recognise the union and engage in collective bargaining.

But the ITF has success stories to tell, too
But the ITF has success stories to tell, too. In Mexico, in 2001, trade union solidarity finally prevailed over government attempts to stop strikes by requisitioning. Cabin crew at the private Mexican airline Aeroméxico were twice barred from striking after the government invoked the legal procedure of a requisitioning order, known as a requisa. This provoked international protests, including a message from the ITF. A third strike by the union Assa went ahead on 2 June 2001 but was called off within 48 hours, achieving an agreement for a 9.5 per cent pay rise.

“The company was quite confident that the government would apply the requisa,” said Antonio Fritz, ITF Regional Secretary. “When it did not, the company started to negotiate seriously for the first time.”

For the employers of the 200 drivers of the Vilnius public transport system in Lithuania, minimum services meant a 70 per cent level of service being imposed without consultation – effectively prohibiting a planned one-day strike over unpaid wages. A strike did go ahead on 18 May 2000 but a local court declared the strike, and any future action, illegal. The decision went to appeal and was reversed by the Lithuanian Supreme Court in March 2001 – again following protests from around the world, including from ITF affiliates.

“This is the first such case in Lithuania when the decision on strikes ended in such a result and we are very proud,” said Jonas Petraska, Chair of the Motor Transport Workers’ Federation, the union involved. “The collective agreement is signed in the Vilnius bus depot and wages increased a little. Negotiations are taking place in the Vilnius trolley-bus depot.”

An ILO ruling supported the union’s case and called on the Lithuanian government to amend its legislation so as not to restrict the right to strike. The ruling also clarified the ILO’s own attitude to minimum service levels. Where no agreement can be reached between workers, employers and governments on the minimum level to be set, an independent body must settle the matter.

Workers’ complaints to the ILO about such government violations of fundamental rights are heard by specialist bodies, the Committee on Freedom of Association and the Committee of Experts on Applications. They are lengthy procedures but this is where definitive rulings of principle are made which can be used by trade unions to assert their rights.

“Governments have a worrying tendency to adopt an authoritarian response when confronted with legitimate demands from transport workers,” says ITF Assistant General Secretary Stuart Howard.
“The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has ruled that apart from air traffic controllers, transport is not strictly an essential service. Back-to-work orders in the transport sector are violations of trade union rights; the implementation of minimum services rules is also strictly defined,” Howard adds.

“The ITF will continue to work to ensure transport workers are not bound by the bogus restrictions we still find in operation on every continent.”

Trade unionists suffer violence
The 2001 Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) published in October 2001 showed that, in the year 2000, 209 trade unionists were killed or “disappeared” – 50 per cent more than in the previous year and largely because of the appalling death toll in Colombia (see page 4). Worldwide, about 8,500 were arrested, 3,000 injured, over 100,000 harassed, and nearly 20,000 dismissed because of their trade union activities.

Commenting on the survey, the ICFTU said that, although repression in developing countries was more violent, “employers in the west also try to undermine the unions, but take a more cynical approach”.

The report is available from: ICFTU, 5 Boulevard du Roi Albert II, B-1210 Brussels, Belgium. Website: http://www.icftu.org

Resource books
Transport workers’ rights are focused on in “Workers’ Rights are Human Rights”. This is one of three new ITF resource books for activists. The others are “Women Transporting the World” and “Globalising Solidarity”. Available in English, French, Spanish and Russian.

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Issue 8 March 2002

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