In-person event

In 2023, the University of Bristol Centre for Law at Work (UK) joined forces with the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), and International Lawyers Assisting Workers (ILAW) Network at the Solidarity Center (Washington DC, US) to commence a project on the right to strike. In the context of the notorious decline in legal protection of industrial action across the globe, the project explores what role the right to strike could and should play in contemporary domestic and transnational labour markets.

A first convening meeting for the project has been held, which more than forty experts attended in person and online. One output of the project is a special issue of a journal (the International Labour Review) and a second will be an open access multi-authored book designed to be accessible to those seeking to engage in right to strike litigation and lobbying. Both will be published early in 2025. A website is also being constructed by the ITUC and ILAW which will host primary legal materials (international labour standards, national legislation and case law) of assistance to workers and their representatives.

In this seminar, Professor Tonia Novitz will present some of the initial findings of the project relating to issues of employment status, precarious work, global supply chains, climate change and autocratic governments. She will also outline the content of recent discussions at the International Labour Organisation, where she has been a visiting scholar in the research department. In addition, Professor Shae McCrystal will discuss her contribution to the project, arising from her collaborative research on restrictions of the right to strike for the ‘public good’, including the mechanisms through which decisions are made and who bears the costs of their outcomes. This session will be of interest to all those interested in international labour standards and comparative labour law relating to freedom of association, collective bargaining and industrial action.

About the speaker

Tonia Novitz is a Professor of Labour Law at the University of Bristol Law School in the UK. A graduate of the University of Canterbury (Christchurch, New Zealand) and Balliol College (Oxford, UK), she has held fellowships at the International Institute for Labour Studies and the research department at the International Labour Organization (Geneva), the European University Institute (Florence), the University of Melbourne and the University of Auckland. From 2019 – 2023, she was chair of the steering committee of the international Labour Law Research Network (LLRN). She is currently a UK representative on the advisory board of International Lawyers Assisting Workers (ILAW), and a Vice President of the UK Institute of Employment Rights. She was a founding co-director of the Bristol Centre for Law at Work. Her research interests encompass collective labour rights, international and EU trade, sustainability and migration. Her publications have been cited in the Supreme Court of Canada, the UK Supreme Court and the UK Parliament Joint Committee on Human Rights. She is the author of International and European Protection of the Right to Strike (Oxford University Press 2003) and co-author of The Right to Strike in International Law (Hart/Bloomsbury 2020). Her most recent book, Trade, Labour and Sustainable Development: Leaving no one in the world of work behind is in press and will be published by Edward Elgar in 2024.

Monday 11 March

Time: 1.15-2.15pm

CPD Points: 1

Venue: Common Room, Level 4, New Law Building (F10)