Abstract

This article discusses the right to strike, with special regard to Belgium. Referring to Walter Benjamin, Tindemans argues that strikes are rechtsetzend rather than rechtserhaltend; they constitute a legal order rather than preserve one. Strikes are exceptional phenomena within any legal system, as they do not fit normal criteria of legal validity. According to Tindemans, strikes are to be considered primarily as extralegal phenomena, as means in a political struggle, confronting the “police” of the core institutions of the state and the legal order. Strikes are political actions, moments of collective aspiration towards political equality, and as such threaten the “pureness” of the legal order in favour of a fragmented politics