The situation is getting worse between management and workers at Audi Brussels. Blockades, confiscation of keys, lockouts - are they legal?

Last week, Audi Brussels workers were supposed to gradually return to work after the summer break.

However, following the announcement of the absence of a successor to the currently produced Q8 Etron, and the potential closure of the site in the future, the workers stopped working.

While picket lines were traditionally set up on Boulevard de la Seconde Armée Britannique, the workers did not stop there.

After entering the factory, many of them refused to work while staying on the premises, effectively occupying the site despite the management's requests to resume work, blocking the operations and those who wished to work.

Then, the keys to nearly 200 vehicles were confiscated and hidden, preventing their delivery to dealerships.

Without a legal definition, a strike is generally considered "the collective and concerted abstention, by a group of employees, from performing work with the immediate aim of halting the operations of one or more businesses in order to exert pressure on either employers or a third party."

While the strike is recognized under international law (see Article 6.4 of the European Social Charter), it is only indirectly recognized in Belgium based on the 1948 law on public interest benefits. However, Belgium has ratified international texts such as the European Social Charter.

Strictly speaking, a strike is the right not to work. But trade unions have a much broader conception, sometimes bending the law: they believe a strike involves halting the normal functioning of the company, which includes pickets or occupations of businesses, blocking operations, deliveries, and stocks, or even taking the management hostage. The goal is to make the employer lose money and force them to negotiate. Without this, a strike loses its meaning. Employers, for their part, understandably seek to minimize the impact of union actions.

Although still highly divided, recent case law, influenced by international norms, tends to accept picket lines as inherent to the right to strike. However, this is only the case if they do not involve violence, damage to property, criminal behavior, or excessive infringements on the employer’s property rights or the rights of third parties and non-strikers—i.e., acts of violence.

Sometimes referred to as a "lockout," it originated in 1850 in Great Britain and involves "a temporary closure of a business, not for economic or company-specific reasons, but as an action to strengthen employers' demands or positions in a collective conflict" (according to the definition given by the SPF Employment).

In response, the lockout protects the employer from most excesses, such as occupations, damage, or the confiscation of stock or tools, or the taking of hostages. It brings the right to strike back to its basic foundation—namely, not to work. It obviously puts pressure on the workers, especially since, in the absence of work and if recognized, they are not paid.

Non-strikers, of course, can sue the employer who refuses to give them work, but only if they have had it "witnessed," as was done this Monday morning by a bailiff.

Clearly, Audi Brussels perfectly illustrates the escalation of a collective conflict, but more fundamentally, it reflects a European automotive industry severely impacted by the ecological and industrial policies of the Union.

Rarely has a country, a continent, so systematically and demagogically destroyed one of its best industries.

And from the rumors coming from Germany, Audi Brussels will likely not be the only car factory to close in the near future.