The works council has organised a strike at your facility. If you need to deliver an important order, can you ask employees if they will go along with the strike? Can you hire outside workers?
Organisation. Your employees have organised a strike next week. It is therefore in your interest to know how you should manage the situation, and what alternatives you have when it comes to coordinating all the work during the strike.
Obligations
For workers. Before taking strike action, your employees must give you at least five days' notice, indicating the date on which the strike will take place. If you are not given this notice, the strike will be illegal and no worker will be able to support it.
From the company. However, it is one thing to be notified of the start of the strike, but it is another thing to be told who will go along with it. Note. In this sense, the exercise of strike action is a right that workers have and whose scope and follow-through can only be known on the day on which the strike takes place. For this reason:
- You may not ask them (either individually or collectively in a meeting) if they plan to strike.
- Nor may it threaten or coerce them not to go along with the strike, nor may it retaliate against strikers. For example, you may not deduct more pay than you are required to deduct for the day of the strike.
Substitution. In addition, while the strike lasts, it may not hire employees to replace and cover the tasks that are no longer performed by the striking workers. For this purpose, it may not use the services of a temporary employment agency. Note. But the restrictions for your company do not end there, as the scabbing internal is also not allowed. In other words:
- Even if you know that one of your employees will not take part in the strike, you cannot use functional mobility to assign him or her to the tasks not performed by the strikers.
- If you have several workplaces, you cannot move workers from a workplace that has not gone on strike to another workplace where there are more strikers. Attention! According to the courts, it is also not possible to transfer tasks or orders from a site that is on strike to another site that is operational.
Penalty. If you violate the right to strike and replace employees who are on strike, you will incur a very serious offence punishable by a fine of between 6,251 and 187,515 euros.
Valid alternatives
Good faith. If you want to have everything under control so as not to harm your customers, see how to act:
- If you need to know which employees will not be working (e.g. because the premises need to be cleaned before opening), indicate on the notice board that, for information purposes and to allow non-strikers the right to work, anyone who wishes to do so may voluntarily give notice of their intention to strike.
- If you have an assembly line that is going to be shut down, use multi-skilled workers (i.e. those you already use as "wild cards" for sick leave, absences, etc.). Note. If their duties also include chain-related tasks, it is valid for them to carry out these tasks during the strike.
- It will also act correctly if it has a machine that alone is capable of performing the tasks of a striker.
If your employees have organised a strike, you cannot ask them directly whether they intend to go on strike. In addition, you may not hire external staff or change the functions of non-strikers.