Di prossima pubblicazione nei "Quaderni di RGL" serie "Lavoro e Democrazia"

Questo è il testo della omonima relazione svolta al convegno organizzati il 21 novembre 2025 a Roma dalla Rivista Giuridica del Lavoro su Democrazia sindacale rappresentanza e conflitto: soggetti, regole, problemi, cui sono state aggiunte le note

This paper discusses the origins of the constitutional recognition—not only in Italy—of the right to strike, emphasizing how this occurred amid much controversy, including within legal doctrine, and was achieved not only as a result of the wording of Article 40 of the Constitution, but also through constitutional jurisprudence, which slowly overcame anti-conflict positions, which, however, remained alive in doctrine and have even strengthened since the early 1980s. This occurred primarily through the claim that interpreters should examine the motivations for strikes, and by ignoring the connection—which is instead reiterated in this paper—of the right to strike with Article 3, paragraph 2, of the Constitution, as an instrument of freedom of labor. This conditionalizes any potential legislative intervention, thus denying that Article 40 of the Constitution is a legally binding instrument. constitutes an unlimited deferral to the legislator's decisions, and indeed the imposition of objective rarefaction in the current law on strikes in essential public services is criticized as illegitimate. The assessment of the European Union legal system is different, in which the right to strike action, while recognized, appears to be heavily conditioned by the primacy of fundamental economic freedoms, also as a result of the doctrinal degradation of social rights to rights to benefits by public administrations.