Conducting healthy industrial relations at the place of work is a must to ensure higher levels of workers’ job satisfaction and improved workers’ motivation and therefore higher output. Many times this is achieved, though not exclusively, through collective bargaining. As in other forms of human relationships, industrial relations are built on trust.  

Through meaningful social dialogue, streetwise negotiations or structured negotiated compromises, industrial relations take different forms but all aim to reach an agreement.  To the credit and their negotiations skills, our social partners conclude the overwhelming majority of collective agreements in Malta without the need to resort to industrial action.

Last Wednesday, trade unions around the world organised various events and expressed their determination to defend the right to strike against concerted efforts by a group of uncompromising employers and totalitarian governments.

A small but vociferous group of employers, supported by a growing group of governments, are working hard at the ILO in an attempt to wipe out decades of international legal recognition of the right to strike under ILO Convention 87.  This ILO Convention, which guarantees Freedom of Association, is one of the most important global human rights treaties.  Having created this dispute at the ILO, the employers’ group is now stalling moves to follow the ILO's own Constitution which says that such disputes must be referred to the International Court of Justice for adjudication. Employers’ organisations at the ILO have been trying to change decades of ILO jurisprudence confirming that Convention 87 does provide for the right to strike.

This issue seems to have gone unnoticed in Malta, even by local trade unions.  This may partly be due to the fact that there is no immediate threat to the right to strike, which was put to the test in our Courts some years back.

In Malta, the right to strike has been tried-and-tested and is now guaranteed. In 1998, during the twenty-two short-lived months of the Labour government, the Freeport Terminals Malta plc resorted to court action in a bid to stop the UHM from taking further industrial actions. The UHM had resorted to nation-wide industrial actions as government introduced hefty water and electricity tariffs which would have impacted negatively the purchasing power of workers and their dependents, and the economy had these been implemented.  

Back then, Judge Albert J. Magri declared that the UHM’s industrial actions at the Freeport were illegal and abusive. The effects of this court decision could have ended the right to strike in Malta. This was reversed by the court of Appeal in May 2001, wherein it was clearly stated that the UHM industrial actions were not illegal and were in furtherance of a trade dispute.

In a recent similar landmark ruling, Canada’s Supreme Court has affirmed that the right to strike is an essential part of a meaningful collective bargaining process and is protected in the Canadian Constitution. The Court found that a law which denied the right to strike for a number of public sector workers, with no alternative mechanism, was unconstitutional.In reaching its decision, the Court reaffirmed that the right to strike is protected by ILO Convention 87 on Freedom of Association, as well as other international treaties. 

Taking away from workers representatives’ the right to strike would return workers to feudal times. Workers’ right to withhold labour is the cornerstone of industrial democracy. 

While the right to strike is an important tool for trade unions, it should be used diligently. Trigger-happy unions would not be giving any valid contribution, nor doing any favours to the workers that they represent.  

Unfortunately, this is the case in the local health sector, which is manifestly plagued with industrial actions. Perhaps the time has come to diagnose this situation, look for flaws in the relationship between the management and the unions involved in the health sector and set new pathways in dealing with grievances. Bottlenecks, tangible causes, genuine motives and triggersshould be identified and addressed to limit industrial actions in the health sector.

Although from afar, I am taking the liberty to put forward some questions to key stakeholders in the health sector. Are unions stepping on the role of management? Has management at all levels renounced its duties and functions?  Is the management structure weak and spineless? Is management being over-ruled by higher political authorities? Is there too much political interference? In the current circumstances I will only make one recommendation.  Unions representing various categories of workers and the management in the health sector should make an earnest effort to find ways to address the constantbrewing diverging views.