The Swiss Constitution guarantees the right to strike in Article 28, and the European Convention on Human Rights confirms this. The problem is that exercising this right legally requires four conditions to be met simultaneously, and the most onerous of these is the one that effectively blocks almost everything.
For a strike to be lawful in Switzerland, it must be called by an organisation authorised to negotiate a collective agreement; its objectives must be covered by that agreement; it must not breach the obligation of ‘paix du travail’; and it must be proportionate. If any of these four conditions is not met, the strike is unlawful and the employer may sue the workers for damages. This is not a theoretical threat.
The "paix du travail" has a precise date of origin: 19 July 1937, when the Swiss metalworkers’ unions and employers signed a historic agreement. The unions agreed not to strike over matters already covered by the collective agreement; the employers, in turn, agreed not to lock out workers. This model gradually spread across sectors until it became the norm in Swiss industrial relations.
The figures speak for themselves. In the 1980s, Switzerland lost 1.4 working days per year to strikes for every 1,000 employees. Germany lost 666. Italy, 1,123. It is not that Swiss workers are more satisfied with their conditions. It is simply that the system is designed to channel disputes into negotiation before they reach the streets.
What many Spaniards who come here don’t realise is that if your sector has a collective agreement and you take part in a strike over an issue already covered by that agreement, your employer can take you to court. That is why, when the Swiss press refers to a “greve”, it is often technically a day of action or a demonstration, not a work stoppage in the strict sense. The legal distinction matters.