Economic procedural legal personality of Trade Unions in the context of the implementation of the Sustainable Development Strategy by the global community

Abstract

The study highlights the content and structural elements of the concept of ‘economic procedural legal personality’ of trade unions as an important component of the procedural and legal status of these entities at the doctrinal and legislative levels. The author identifies some problematic issues related to the subject matter of the study and develops proposals for improving the legal regulation of these issues in the context of implementation of the sustainable development strategy by the international community.
The article determines that modern trade unions are one of the active promoters of sustainable development goals on a global scale, since the purpose of their establishment is to represent and protect labour, socio-economic rights and interests of employees, and it is they who carry out the mission related to fair distribution of income, primarily between employers and employees, without regard to protecting the right to decent work of the latter.
The author proves that trade unions are inherent in economic procedural legal personality, which is the key to their effective statutory activities, since it is an indispensable component of their procedural and legal status and is necessary to protect property and other rights and interests of these entities as parties to economic proceedings in the event of relevant conflicts.
The article summarizes that trade unions as parties to economic proceedings are characterized by the following: they become parties to an economic case and conduct proceedings in it on their own behalf (as a plaintiff or a defendant); may participate in the case through representatives; are endowed with the appropriate procedural and legal status from the moment the proceedings are initiated; act in defence of their own rights and legitimate interests; each party is interested in resolving the dispute in its own favour; their legal personality allows for procedural succession; and a court decision is made in their case.
The author argues that it is necessary to rename Article 44 of the CEP of Ukraine from ‘Procedural legal capacity and procedural capacity’ to ‘Economic procedural legal personality’ and to supplement this Article with a new provision on procedural tort capacity, which is closely related to capacity and consists in the ability to bear responsibility for committed offences. This will make it possible to provide a full description of the triad of elements of trade unions’ economic procedural legal personality as a complex legal property of these entities.