Trade unions should...have rights which empower them and their Essay

Trade unions should...have rights which empower them and their members. These rights should be clear and unequivocal, and they s - Essay Example Historically, there have been minimal official restrictions on freedom of association in the United Kingdom, even though there have been several, created by a variety of issues (Keith 2008). Mostly, and definitely in the recent decade, the primary concern is related to limitations on trade unions with regard to which several statutory limitations and other restrictions have been implemented (Wrigley 2002). These actions have raised several communications and grievances to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the administrative units of which have had opportunity to discover that the legal code under consideration fails international labour standards (Servais 2008). This subject matter is specifically related to the perspective of the International Covenant’s Article 22 taking into consideration the fact that the essence of these mechanisms is identified by paragraph 3, as this essay will discuss, the exact implication of this prerequisite is quite indefinite. As stated by Keith Ewing and Carolyn Jones (2006): â€Å"Trade unions should... have rights which empower them and their members. These rights should be clear and unequivocal, and they should properly equip trade unions... to act within the boundaries of international labour standards to protect the interests of their members. This means a right to organise, a right to bargain and a right to strike in a new legal settlement for British trade unions...(p. 35)† In view of this statement, this essay will critically analyse the industrial relations law in the United Kingdom. It will provide a brief historical discussion of the law relating to freedom of association and the right to strike and will identify which aspects of UK industrial relations law fail to meet international standards. The Right to Freedom of Association As stated in Article 22(1) (Jayawickrama 2003): Everyone shall have the right to freedom of association with others, including the right to form and join trade unions f or the protection of his interests (p. 735). What is quite ambiguous is the degree to which Article 22 safeguards the movement of individuals who are in association with others. A major problem, stressed by the constitutional courts on the one hand and European Court of Human Rights’ covenant on the other, is whether securities resembling those in Article 22(1) are valid only to safeguard the right to freedom of association, or whether they act further by safeguarding the freedom to act in association with others to advocate the fundamental objectives of the association under consideration (Blanpain 2010). The mechanism in constitutional and international law, by and large, has been to espouse the earlier, much restricted, and much less radical context of interpretation (Keith 2008). As stated by Lecher and Platzer (1997), it is the perspective of the Human Rights Committee as well. Taking into consideration the quite narrow statute it is challenging to determine with any lev el of accuracy whether and to what degree UK law and practice meet Article 22(1). Nevertheless, there are three primary concerns which emerge for analysis: (1) the right to join an association; (2) right of the association to manage its internal activities; and (3) the right of the asso