The ongoing discussions in the House of Advisors on organic bill No. 97-15 establishing the conditions and modalities for exercising the right to strike “are taking place in a climate of great responsibility,” said Thursday in Rabat , the Minister of Economic Inclusion, Small Business, Employment and Skills, Younes Sekkouri. In a statement to the press on the sidelines of a meeting of the Committee on Education and Cultural and Social Affairs in the House, as part of the detailed discussion of the said organic bill, Mr. Sekkouri welcomed the essential points “raised by social partners and advisors, particularly those in relation to the definition of strike and the categories it includes, in order to guarantee that the text of the law respects the democratic and legal principles of the Kingdom”. Likewise, he considered that the in-depth discussion of the content of the bill is “essential for each chapter, section and article to produce the desired result at the societal level”, stressing that the objective of the discussions is to “propose a text that achieves a balance between the rights of strikers and those of companies, which guarantees freedom of work and the rights of society by ensuring minimum service in vital establishments.
The first article of the bill, in addition to the definitions, focused a large part of the interventions of the parliamentary groups during this meeting, which pleaded for the importance of stipulating in an article, similar to the preamble, the general foundations, the principles and the basic references of the bill defining the conditions and modalities for exercising the right to strike as a guaranteed universal right, while ensuring the consistency of the text with international and national references with a view to strengthening the confidence of the different parties concerned by the exercise of this right. In this regard, advisor Hanaa Benkhair, of the UGTM, noted that “the preamble is considered the spirit of the law and the force on which the judge rules according to his philosophy, because it explains the texts and guides the legal foundations of the legislative text”, considering that “it is not possible to imagine an organic text or law without a preamble”, while calling for the reformulation of certain terms contained in the first article. For his part, Lahcen Nazhi, coordinator of the CDT group, called for the development of a preamble that reflects the content of the articles of the bill, while emphasizing the protection of the right to strike, balance between the rights of workers and employers and the stipulation of obligations and international conventions, in addition to the institutionalization of social dialogue.
“The bill relating to strikes is one of the regulatory laws which should be ratified, in accordance with the constitutional text,” declared, for his part, Mustapha Dahmani, advisor to the National Rally of Independents (RNI), noting that “all regulatory laws issued in accordance with the 2011 Constitution did not include a preamble.” And to note that it is not detrimental for a legal text of great importance to include a preamble or a preface, but we must pay attention to a fundamental fact, namely that the legal nature of the preamble is only a prior to understanding the legal provisions and rules which will be enshrined in the provisions of the following articles”, specifying that the references contained in the preamble are only means to help understand the provisions of the law, whether ordinary or regulatory. Commenting on the interventions of parliamentary advisers on the subject of the “preamble”, Mr. Sekkouri referred to the opinion of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council (CESE) “which does not speak of a preamble, but rather of a preliminary article explaining the normative references on which the right to strike is based and the principles on which its exercise is based”, as well as the opinion of the National Human Rights Council (CNDH) “which speaks of a preamble while recalling the Court decision constitutional in this regard. He also indicated that there are 19 regulatory laws, none of which have a preamble, “which cannot be a coincidence”, adding that “the judgment of the Constitutional Court is clear regarding regulatory laws, because they are complementary to the Constitution.” The government “does not mind there being a preamble, but this law, the legislative process, the debate on it, the solid arguments of the parliamentary groups and groups, as well as the amendments and the content which will follow, should not come up against an opinion (from the Constitutional Court) according to which one of its contents is unconstitutional, which would be a waste of time,” he said. In this regard, explained Mr. Sekkouri, there is a concern “to develop a text acceptable in all its aspects and consistent, in its form and content, with the requirements of the Constitution”.
In addition to the preamble, article 2 of the bill, which defines the strike and article 3, which discusses the implications of this regulatory law, were the subject of numerous discussions and interventions from groups, many of which called for careful examination of their content in order to avoid possible problems related to interpretation.
