Following three days of talks that ended on February 25, the ITUC announced that an agreement had been concluded between representatives of both unions and employers about the right to strike. Behind this dispute over the nature of the right to strike sat ILO members who had been gearing up for another battle over the ILO supervisory procedure that monitors Member States respect of fundamental standards. Once the issue of the nature of the right to strike had been settled the parties were able to put the controversy over the supervision procedure to bed by proposing a framework for a monitoring system.
On February 18, the ITUC organized an international union mobilization “with over 100 demonstrations that took place in over 60 countries”, (c.f. article No. 8900) supporting the right to strike “that has been under attack from employers”, at the ILO. For the past two years employers and workers representatives have been at loggerheads over the nature of the right to strike, with the employers arguing that the bodies tasked with supervising Member States application of standards could not actually address the right to strike since no ILO convention recognized the right to strike.
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