The International Court of Justice (ICJ), sitting at the Peace Palace in The Hague, has held by a vote of 10-4 that the right of workers to strike falls within the "freedom of association" protected by the 1948 International Labour Convention No. 87, concerning Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize. The Court delivered the advisory opinion at the request of the ILO Governing Body, which had asked whether the right to strike of workers and their organizations is protected under the Convention. The opinion was issued on 21 May 2026, with the Court speaking through its President, Yuji Iwasawa.

The ruling is significant because Convention No. 87, a cornerstone of international labor law adopted after World War II, nowhere explicitly mentions a right to strike. The Convention guarantees workers and employers the right to form and join organizations of their choosing. The ICJ nonetheless answered the advisory question in the affirmative, interpreting the Convention's freedom-of-association guarantee to include the right to strike.

The Operative Language

The majority ruled that "freedom of association is instrumental in facilitating workers' organizations to take collective action to further and defend the interests of their members, including through the exercise of the right to strike. … [S]trike action is one of the main activities engaged in and tools used by workers and their organizations to promote their interests and improve conditions of labour, thereby ensuring the effective exercise of the freedom of association protected under Convention No. 87."

Judge Sarah Cleveland, a Yale Law graduate and member of the Court, joined the opinion and added a separate declaration. Workers, she wrote, "associate to try to enhance their collective power in order to secure better wages, hours, and working conditions." She continued: "While ordinarily an instrument of last resort, a strike is a vital tool for protecting workers from exploitation and defending human dignity in the workplace. Without the right to strike, employees lose the leverage needed to overcome power asymmetry in the workplace and at the bargaining table, so employers no longer need to negotiate in good faith."

Cleveland also noted that, although the Court did not reach the question, "given the breadth of recognition of the right to strike in numerous overlapping international and regional instruments — as well as in at least 97 States and its legislative protection in more than 150 others — a compelling case can be made that protection of the right to strike is a principle of customary international law." Professor James Brudney of Fordham Law School, a former member of the ILO's Committee of Experts, advanced a similar argument in a 2021 Yale Journal of International Law article.

The Proceedings

The ICJ, the United Nations' highest court, was established in June 1945 by the UN Charter. It resolves contentious disputes between member nations and delivers advisory opinions on questions referred by the United Nations or specialized international agencies.

At the public hearings on 6 October 2025, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) — which the source describes as the world's most representative international workers' organization, speaking for 191 million workers across 169 countries — argued in favor of recognizing the right. The ITUC legal team included Harold Hongju Koh, Sterling Professor of International Law at Yale Law School; ITUC general counsel Paapa Danquah; and international law professors Pierre Klein of Brussels, Philippe Sands of University College London, and Phoebe Okowa of Queen Mary University of London. Okowa was subsequently elected to the ICJ and was recused from the advisory opinion. Yale Law students Soledad Slowing-Romero and Trinh Truong assisted Koh on the case.

Koh told the Court at the October hearing that legal recognition of the right to strike would not threaten social order. "In real life," he said, "the right to strike is a safety valve, a nonviolent bulwark of social peace. Every day, we are served meals and drinks, ride in cars and buses, and work in offices on equipment that is built, prepared, and maintained by committed and conscientious workers. They don't want to strike; they want to work; to do their jobs for a fair and honest wage. But behind their toil is constant awareness that if their rights are abused, they hold the fundamental right to withhold that work in fellowship with their co-workers."

Reacting to the judgment, Koh called the decision a "landmark ruling" whose position "will affect the real rights of tens of millions of working people around the world." He said the judgment "strengthens industrial democracy and reaffirms a global norm endorsing peaceful bargaining between employers and workers the world over," and that the Court's opinion "could lead to changes in labor laws worldwide in countries that thus far have not recognized employees' right to strike."

Practical Consequences for Practitioners

Although advisory opinions are not binding in the way contentious judgments are, the ICJ's authoritative interpretation of Convention No. 87 will carry substantial weight before the ILO supervisory bodies, domestic courts, and international human rights tribunals. Labor and employment counsel advising multinational employers, unions, and governments should expect the opinion to feature prominently in arguments before ILO committees on freedom of association and in litigation over national strike prohibitions or restrictions in the now numerous states that do not expressly protect the right to strike. Companies with operations in jurisdictions lacking statutory strike protections should assess exposure to complaints grounded in the Convention as interpreted by the Court, and treaty-based claims invoking freedom of association will likely cite the opinion as the definitive international statement on the question. Judge Cleveland's dictum on customary international law, while not a holding, supplies a doctrinal foothold for advocates seeking to establish the right to strike outside the Convention framework entirely.