Resumen de Balancing the Right to Strike and Other Public Interests: The Importance of the Status of the Right to Strike

Petra Herzfeld Olsson, Shae McCrystal

• The regulation of strike action involves the balancing of competing public interests – the benefits derived from collective bargaining and the right to strike and others including public safety, health, welfare, and industrial peace. We explore how this balancing act plays out in the legal systems of two national jurisdictions, Australia and Sweden, and through the ILO principles on freedom of association as developed by the ILO’s supervisory bodies. We seek to understand how different regulatory approaches to these competing public interests produces different outcomes and the potential consequences where protecting other public interests is prioritised over the right to strike.