The Right to Strike by Medical Practitioners

Abstract

The right to strike action is one of the fundamental human rights and trade union freedoms. Strike, as a form of protest against broadly understood injustice is one of the most important measures of trade union protection of workers’ interests. However, the right to strike is not absolute and its legal use must often take into account the interests of the employer and third parties. The aim of the article is to assess – basing on a review of the literature and the case-law – the doctors’ right to strike from a legal, ethical and moral perspective. The issue of medical practitioners’ right to participate in a strike is ambiguous in view of the legislation currently in force, and two opposing positions have developed in the collective labour law literature. The problem of the legality of this form of protest of medical practitioners is nowadays left to the assessment of the parties to a collective bargaining dispute, carried out based on the general clause of a possible “threat to human life and health or national security”, with the lack of appropriate judicial review in this regard. It is, therefore, undoubtedly necessary for the legislature to take appropriate pro futuro legislative action.