Employers' Handbook on ILO Standards-related Activities

APPENDIX 9
for resolving conflicts, and its exercise should be limited to such circumstances. In cases where
the consequences of strikes had effects beyond the enterprise, the government might have to
take measures and prohibition of the strike in such cases was conceivable.
147. Agreeing that the right to strike was truly an essential corollary to the right to organize,
the Government member of Portugal expressed, however, some doubts about certain developments
in the survey concerning for example: the exercise of the right to strike in the public
service, the maintenance of employment relations, sympathy strikes or strikes protesting
against social and economic policy, procedures for strikes, lawful forms of strike action, sanctions
in the case of illegal strikes and minimum services. In order to consider the principles put
forward by the Committee of Experts as rules of international law, the Conference would have
to adopt them according to the principle of tripartism. If a Convention were to be adopted,
would all the rules elaborated by the Committee have to be included? Would States which had
ratified Convention No. 87 adhere to the new standard?
148. The Government member of the United States indicated that the President of her
country had stated that he would sign a law prohibiting the replacement of striking workers.
The legislative amendments had been adopted by the House of Representatives and were presently
under consideration by the Senate.
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