You said „you can‘t waive it in a contract“, but that‘s also not the case here. The right is waived by entering a collective bargaining agreement, which could b

You said „you can‘t waive it in a contract“, but that‘s also not the case here. The right is waived by entering a collective bargaining agreement, which could be treated differently. There are rights in the German labor law that can‘t be waived by a mere contract, but can be waived in a collective bargaining agreement. And while I‘m not versed in Canadian law, the article indicates that the point of contention here is that this has been ruled as a strike that is illegal because a collective bargaining agreement is in place and for the duration of that agreement, strikes are not permitted. As to why this is considered a strike, the article is a bit hazy. The contract seems to say that overtime is mandatory unless there’s sufficient volunteers. The union seems to have asked the employees to not work overtime - and that could be considered a strike. They‘re not performing their work duties as contractually required, which is sort of the definition of a strike. Setting aside the question of whether such a requirement to perform overtime work is legal or not, I can imagine some similar ruling in germany. Overtime can be contractually required here (within boundaries), and collectively calling for rejecting overtime could be considered a collective action. Details obviously matter, so blanket statements here are impossible.