I.

I think it may be useful to recall certain elementary notions relative to strikes. The strike is an economic phenomenon, depending upon the following principles:—

• (1). An individual has the right to refuse to continue supplying an enterprise with his labour, just as an enterprise has the right to dismiss a workman.
• (2). If a workman has this right, ten, a hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand have the right to act in the same manner.
• (3). A strike is only legal if the strikers have observed the obligation to give proper notices. Otherwise they are liable to be prosecuted and to pay damages.
• (4). From the day on which strikers have broken their contract of labour they are free, but the establishment which they Edition: current; Page: [268] have left is equally released from all obligations with regard to them. From the day on which strikers go out on strike, they forfeit all the advantages acquired by them in respect of grades, gradual increases of wages and superannuation allowances.

These are the economic and judicial principles upon which the normal right to strike is based.