New obligations and restrictions will come into force the day after their enactment. The government's strategy is clear: to ensure that no essential service in the country is paralyzed. The initiative will now be in the hands of the unions, which will have to adjust their strategies to this renewed and stricter legal control.
The Executive Branch issued a decree that redefines, expands, and toughens the rules for exercising the right to strike in virtually the entire spectrum of the country's essential public services. The measure, which repeals the regulations in force since 2009 and 2010, marks a turning point in the relationship between unions, companies, and the State itself.
The decree, issued under Article 69 of the Constitution, which recognizes the right to strike but allows restrictions on critical services, details an expanded list of 15 strategic sectors, from energy, water, and health to air, maritime, land transport, ports, customs, metro, agribusiness of food, cemeteries, and public works contracted by the State.
Mandatory 8-day notice and shifts from 20% to 30%
To declare a strike, workers in these sectors must now give at least eight days' notice to the Ministry of Labor. In addition, they must guarantee emergency shifts that maintain between 20% and 30% of the active workforce. The Ministry of Labor (Mitradel) may raise that percentage when it considers that it affects the continuity of the service. In the case of transport, ships, airplanes, trains, buses, the decree orders that the units must be taken to their destination before starting the strike, a clause that has historically generated friction between unions and authorities.
The State may intervene in companies and suspend strikes
One of the most sensitive points is Article 5: the State may temporarily assume the direction and administration of the affected service when the strike represents harm to the community. Furthermore, when a labor conflict escalates, Mitradel may order that it be submitted to arbitration, which implies the immediate suspension of the strike. The decision is appealable, but without stopping the effects of the order.
Expanded list of essential services
The decree makes a key turn by defining "essential public services," among others:
Electric power (generation, transmission, and distribution). Fixed and mobile telephone communications. Public passenger transport (land, air, maritime, rail). Ports, cargo, unloading, and logistics. Health services of the Minsa and the CSS. Drinking water (IDAAN). Urban and domestic sanitation. Agricultural and agribusiness production of food. Municipal cemeteries. Companies contracted for public works or social interest projects.
The inclusion of the agribusiness sector, public works, and the entire port and logistics chain marks a substantial change in the map of services subject to special restrictions.
The Supreme Court backed the scope of the Executive Branch
The decree includes criteria from the Supreme Court of Justice, which in rulings from 1995 and 2024 reiterated that the State has the authority to regulate strikes in essential services and to define which sectors must be subject to these restrictions. The document also cites the position of the ILO on the obligation to guarantee the continuity of services whose interruption could put the life, safety, or health of the population at risk.
The 2009 and 2010 regulations have been repealed
With this new framework, the decrees that regulated the matter for 15 years have been officially annulled.
