Abstract

Act no. 146/1990 on the regulation of strike in the sector of essential public services, as reformed by Act no. 83/2000, compels collective agreements to insert cool down and conciliation procedures within the agreement for the determination of the indispensable services. The respect of these procedures is a condition of legitimacy of the strike itself. Thus, the strike becomes the last "ratio"; it is no longer taken into consideration as a phenomenon by itself, but only as an eventual and undesirable consequence of the missed pacific resolution of the controversy. The Author does not take a clear-cut position on the constitutional legitimacy of the choice operated by the legislator, which has introduced a principle - that of the strike as last "ratio" - that is unknown to our legal system; he stresses, however, how this principle does not fit within a collective relations system that is characterised by a poor level of cohesion and by a preventive selection of the subjects authorised to make collective agreements. The Author, finally, judges as worthy of attention the solutions (the French one and, above all, the UK's ones of the recognition) which conjugate the last "ratio" principle with rules on strike and collective agreements different from the cold down and conciliation procedures.