Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 2022, published 111st ILC session (2023)

Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention, 1948 (No. 87) - Poland (Ratification: 1957)

The Committee notes the observations of the National Commission of the Independent and Self-Governing Trade Union (NSZZ) “Solidarność” received on 1 September 2022, as well as the observations of the All-Poland Alliance of Trade Unions (OPZZ), transmitted with the Government’s report, referring to the issues examined by the Committee below.

Article 3 of the Convention. Right of organizations to organize their activities in full freedom and to formulate their programmes. The Committee had previously requested the Government to ensure that workers’ organizations were able to express, if necessary, through protest actions, their views more broadly as regards economic and social matters affecting their members’ interests. It referred, in this respect, to sections 1 and 17 of the Law on Collective Labour Disputes, according to which, a collective dispute between employees and an employer or employers may only relate to working conditions, wages, social benefits, union rights and freedoms of employees or other groups of persons who enjoy the right to organize, and that a strike is a collective labour stoppage by employees for the purpose of settling a dispute concerning the above-mentioned matters. The Committee notes the Government’s indication that the draft Law on Collective Labour Disputes, which entered into the list of legislative and programme works of the Council of Ministers on 1 July 2022, broadens the definition of collective disputes to cover all collective matters in which trade unions represent individuals performing paid work in relation to professional, economic or social interests or rights related to the performance of work. The Committee recalls that occupational and economic interests which workers defend through the exercise of the right to strike, or the conduct of protest actions more broadly, do not only concern better working conditions or collective claims of an occupational nature. The Committee notes that the NSZZ “Solidarność” alleges several shortcomings in the draft Law, in particular, as concerns the narrow scope of the subject matter of an industrial dispute and the exercise of the right to strike of workers in large companies. The Committee therefore requests the Government to review the draft law on Collective Labour Disputes in consultation with the social partners with a view to ensuring that workers’ organizations are able to exercise the right to strike and express through protest actions more broadly, their views as regards economic and social matters affecting their members’ interests.