Another Disappointment in Strasbourg
本文分析了英国废除农业工资委员会后，工会向欧洲人权法院挑战该措施但被驳回的案件，探讨了集体谈判权的法律保护问题。
The Agricultural Wages Board of England and Wales (AWB), the body responsible for setting minimum wages and conditions for workers in the agricultural industry, was abolished by section 72 of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act (ERRA) 2013 with effect from 1 October 2013. This measure was taken as part of a broader Government plan to simplify employment legislation and remove regulatory and administrative burdens on businesses.1 Originally set up in 1917, the AWB was the last body of its kind, with Wages Councils in other sectors having been abolished from the 1960s–1993. Without pursuing domestic proceedings, Unite the Union brought a challenge against the measure before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in October 2013.2 It claimed that the measure was a violation of Article 11 (freedom of association) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and in particular its right to collective bargaining: Unite asserted that, in the absence of the AWB, there was no effective legal mechanism for collective bargaining in the agricultural sector.3 In May 2016, the First Section of the Court declared the application inadmissible as manifestly ill-founded.