The Skopje Court of Appeal rejected the appeal of the Independent Union of Air Traffic Controllers (SSKL) and confirmed the first-instance verdict of the Basic Civil Court Skopje, which prohibits the organization of the announced strike for October 2025 – the legal representative of M-NAV AD Skopje, lawyer Goran Nikoloski, announced today, reported MIA.
According to him, with the final verdict, the courts accepted the three key arguments of M-NAV that the announced strike does not result from the protection of rights from employment, that it was scheduled contrary to the legal procedure, without mandatory mediation, and that SSKL has no legal legitimacy to organize a strike as a subsidiary of the Independent Union for Traffic and Communications.
– This verdict opens the question whether the previously organized strikes by SSKL were legal. The answer is clear, the court determined that they were also carried out outside the legal regulations – said Nikoloski.
He added that in accordance with the statutory acts of the union SSKL does not represent a union in terms of the Law on Labor Relations and cannot take actions independently.
According to him, the verdict raises questions about all other activities that SSKL took outside the parent union.
– In a situation where the actions are taken without legal legitimacy, their legal validity is also called into question – stressed Nikoloski.
However, given the final ruling, any future action would have to comply with the Labor Relations Act, the procedure for mediating valid union legitimacy.
After the court ban on the strike announced for October 20, 2025, M-NAV assessed that the decision of the Basic Civil Court was legally founded and made on the basis of established irregularities in the procedure for announcing a strike.
The strike was supposed to be implemented by restricting flights and even by partially closing the airspace in certain terms, but the Basic Civil Court Skopje passed a temporary measure that prohibited it as illegal.
