The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Switzerland breached the right to strike of 17 hospital workers who were dismissed after taking industrial action in 2013, in a judgment that criticises Swiss courts for turning a lawful strike unlawful with hindsight.

In a Chamber judgment delivered on 5 November 2026, in the case of Alonso Radesca and Others v. Switzerland, the court held unanimously that there had been a violation of Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects freedom of assembly and association.

The case concerned a strike at La Providence Hospital, a private hospital in the canton of Neuchatel. In June 2012 the hospital withdrew from the collective bargaining agreement for the health sector in the canton, the CCT Sante 21 agreement, with effect from 31 December 2012. The withdrawal prompted a strike by hospital staff in the winter of 2012-13.

The Swiss authorities found the strike to be unlawful. The hospital employees who had taken part in it were dismissed, and criminal sanctions were imposed on the secretaries of the unions who had been mandated to conduct the negotiations. In all, 17 former employees and four trade union secretaries brought the case to Strasbourg.

The Swiss Federal Supreme Court had ruled that the strike ceased to be a last resort on 23 January 2013, after the hospital made concessions, including keeping the collective labour agreement in place for that year. On that basis the court considered the continuation of the strike disproportionate and therefore unlawful.

The European court disagreed. It found that neither Article 28 of the Swiss Constitution, which guarantees the right to strike, nor the national case law provided a clear basis for concluding that a lawful strike could become unlawful because a court, with the benefit of hindsight, considered that an employer had offered terms which meant the continuation of the strike was unnecessary.

Such an interpretation, the judges said, created a significant degree of uncertainty for unions and employees as to the circumstances in which they could continue collective action while retaining the protection afforded under national law. By denying the strikers protection against dismissal on this basis, the Swiss courts had infringed the very essence of their right to strike.

The court held that Switzerland must pay 10,000 euros to the applicant employees and 5,000 euros to the applicant trade union secretaries, together with 2,500 euros in respect of costs and expenses to one of the applicants.

The ruling is a significant one for labour rights in Europe. The right to strike is an essential part of freedom of association under Article 11, and the court made clear that workers cannot be expected to predict, while a strike is under way, whether a court will later decide that an employer's concessions made the action unnecessary. A strike that begins lawfully, the judgment says, cannot be stripped of its protection simply because a judge later takes a different view of the employer's offer.

The case had taken years to reach Strasbourg. It was not until 17 December 2018 that the finding that the strike had been unlawful became final in the Swiss courts, and the applicants then turned to the European court. The judgment, issued as ECHR 276 (2026), now stands as a warning to national courts across Europe that retrospective rulings on the lawfulness of strikes must not leave workers guessing about their rights.