Regulatory framework of strike and its problem in Latvia

Rıga Stradiņš University, Faculty of Law, Riga, Latvia

Abstract

International legal provisions provide for human rights and freedoms, and the freedom of expression and the right to work belong to these. Considering that during any employment relationship disputes can arise between the involved parties, international legal provisions state that a strike as the final means for the settlement of a dispute can be used. Paragraph 108 of the Satversme (the Constitution of Latvia) provides that in Latvia, employed people have the right to strike. Systematically, the provisions of the Constitution are being regulated by the Labour Dispute Law and the Strike Law. It might seem that in Latvia, any employed person has been entitled to the right to strike as provided by the Satversme. However, the strike of general practitioners in summer 2017 highlighted the problem of executing strikes. Firstly, at the time being, the right to strike can only be associated with one form of employment, i.e., employment relationship. As only a part of general practitioners is employed on the basis of an employment agreement, the strike regulatory framework that is in force in Latvia can be used only by a part of general practitioners employed under an employment agreement in order to protect their collective interests. Secondly, the Labour Dispute Law provides for that a strike as the final means can be used exclusively for the protection of collective interests (within the framework of concluding a collective agreement), but not within the framework of a contract governed by public law. The strike by general practitioners showed that Latvia has complied only partially with international legal provisions because a strike can only be used by people employed under employment agreements and only in disagreements regarding a Collective agreement. In order to resolve this problem so that any employed person is entitled to the right to strike in the future, it is necessary to amend the Labour Dispute Law by expanding the range of labour dispute subjects. The aim: to analyse international and Latvia's regulatory framework for the right of employed people to strike and recommend necessary amendments to laws to solve detected problems. Materials used: international legal provisions and Latvian legal acts, publications and literature. Methods used in this article: descriptive, analysis, synthesis, dogmatic, induction and deduction as well as legal interpretation methods – grammatical, systemic, historical and teleological.