TRADE UNION AS A RIGHTS HOLDER UNDER THE EUROPEAN CONVENTION ON HUMAN RIGHTS

Rafał Mizerski

Wydział Prawa i Administracji Uniwersytet Warmińsko-Mazurski w Olsztynie
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7192-1374

Abstract

The author of the article discusses – in the light of Strasbourg jurisprudence - the notion of “trade union”, questions of representativeness and legal personality of a trade union, trade union’s rights and relations between them and rights of natural persons. He does not share the
view that the notion of “trade union” under the Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights should embrace employers organizations. He points out that the status of representative trade union still has an impact on the scope of trade union’s rights, that a refusal by the domestic
authorities to grant legal-entity status to a trade union amounts in principle to an interference with the exercise of the right to freedom of association, and that among essential elements of the right to organise are the right to form or join a trade union, the prohibition of closed-shop agreements, the right for a trade union to seek to persuade the employer to hear what it has to say on behalf of its members and the right to bargain collectively (but not the right to strike). Despite the fact a trade union is a separate legal entity, its interest is identified in the Strasbourg proceedings, to a certain degree, with that of its members, when a question of admissibility of complaint is decided.