Sanchez Navajas v. Spain (dec.)

Information Note on the Court’s case-law 31

June 2001

Sanchez Navajas v. Spain (dec.) - 57442/00

Decision 21.6.2001 [Section IV]

Article 11

Article 11-1

Freedom of association

Refusal to pay a trade union representative for time spent studying new legislation on trade union elections: inadmissible

The applicant, a trade-union representative elected by local-government employees, was granted fifteen hours’ paid leave of absence for trade-union activities carried out in September 1993. He accounted for the time by saying that it had been spent studying new legislation on trade-union elections and its implications for collective bargaining. In November 1994 the mayor decided to deduct fifteen hours’ wages from the applicant’s pay on the ground that the study had been carried out in his own interests rather than in the interests of the staff members he represented. The applicant appealed against that decision, relying on the right to form and join trade unions embodied in the Constitution. In 1996 the Andalusia High Court of Justice dismissed his appeal, holding that a study of new trade-union legislation was a private activity that could not be carried out at the taxpayer’s expense. The Constitutional Court dismissed as ill-founded an amparo appeal by the applicant, who had relied on the right to form and join trade unions.

Inadmissible under Article 11: It could be inferred from Article 11, in the light of Article 28 of the European Social Charter (Revised), that workers’ representatives should as a rule – within certain limits – be afforded such facilities as might be appropriate in order to enable them to discharge their trade-union functions promptly and efficiently. In this case, however, the applicant had not demonstrated in what way his study of the new legislation was strictly necessary for the effective exercise of his functions as the local-government workers’ trade-union representative. There had therefore been no interference with the exercise of his right to form and join trade unions, since the decision to deduct the wages corresponding to his paid leave for trade-union activities had not attained a sufficient degree of severity to constitute a substantial impairment of the right enshrined in Article 11: manifestly ill-founded.

[N.B. This case marks a development in the Court’s case-law set out in the Schmidt and Dahlström v. Sweden judgment, Series A no. 21.]

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This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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