All French unions have launched a national strike call against the pension reforms for January 19. What conditions must be met in order to be able to strike and be protected by law?
Faced with the pension reform, the eight French unions called for a national strike on Thursday 19 January. All workers, salaried or self-employed, from the public or private sector are invited to take part in the social movement and the unions have taken all the necessary measures to allow the greatest possible mobilization. If some unionized workers are aware of the procedure to follow to exercise the right to strike in the rules of the art, other employees are still groping.
Who can strike?
The right to strike is guaranteed by the 1958 Constitution, but it is framed. As an individual right, the right to strike can be exercised by each worker but only within a collective. This clarification is in the definition of the right to strike which is the collective stoppage of work organized in a concerted manner and in order to defend professional claims.
All the employees of a company can therefore strike when there are several of them (minimum 2) to carry the movement. If an employee is alone in wanting to strike within a company, he can go on strike only if a national call for mobilization has been launched, which is the case for the challenge to the pension reform.
If all employees and all public servants are able to strike, certain professions are exceptions and are deprived of the right to strike, this is particularly the case for the police (police, CRS , the military, prison administration personnel), communications personnel from the Ministry of the Interior, magistrates of the judiciary and certain air navigation personnel.
The public sector is not exempt from the right to strike, but it sets several conditions for the exercise of this right, in particular the filing of a strike notice by one or more trade union organizations at least five days before the mobilization. This notice is only required in public service departments and in a few private companies responsible for carrying out public service missions and defined sectors such as transport. The SNCF and the RATP are for example concerned by the filing of notice before the outbreak of a strike.
This notice specifies the terms of the strike and frames the movement with start and end times of mobilization or gives the strike an “unlimited” character. The document may also specify the reasons for the strike, namely the demands of the striking employees which must be known to the employer.
In addition to filing notice, employees in the public sector or private companies responsible for public service missions must go on strike. Teachers in primary schools are subject to this obligation.
The right to strike is theoretically more easily exercised in the private sector and, for good reason, the conditions to be met before initiating a strike movement are fewer. There is no notice to respect and employees who wish to strike are not required to inform their employer of their desire to join the social movement. For a strike to be called in the private sector, it is sufficient for the employer to be aware of the professional demands defended by the employees. Of course, the movement must also be a collective initiative, without having to be in the majority within the company.
Once again, only a few professionals are required to declare themselves individually before participating in a strike. These are mainly primary school teachers, nursery staff, hospital agents and a few others who can notify their employer in writing (email, post) or orally. Otherwise, it is never necessary to send a precise list of strikers to the employer. What is obligatory, on the other hand, is to inform the employer of the professional demands which motivate the strike before the outbreak of the movement.
It is generally advisable to send a letter, signed by the collective on strike (at least two people) or by one of the trade unions of the company, to the management to list all the demands related to the movement, to note that these must be professional and cannot be purely political. Labor lawyer Elena Konopnicki toldnews.fr : “Often, we send the demands the very morning of the strike. The day before, it is possible, if we want to warn the employer in advance”.
How long can a strike last?
There is no minimum or maximum period for exercising the right to strike. Striking employees can therefore stop work for a short period (a few minutes, an hour, half a day), for full days, and even for longer periods. Not only not to be time-limited, strikes can also be repeated.
What are the consequences for wages?
Strikes can be organized freely by the employees, subject to a few conditions, but they also have a cost for the strikers. Strikes suspend the employment contract and therefore the time spent defending demands during a social movement is not remunerated. Employers therefore make deductions from wages. This deduction must be proportional to the duration of thework stopping.
In the public, the rule changes slightly since for civil servants, each day of strike and therefore not worked amounts to the retention of 1/30th of the monthly salary and this that the work stoppage runs over the full day or just a few hours. As far as territorial or hospital agents are concerned, deduction from salary is 1/30th per day not worked, 1/60th per half-day of strike and 1/151.67th per hour of absence specifies the national union of autonomous trade unions (Unsa).