Now in its 11th year, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) Global Rights Index offers an important status report on the worldwide struggle to defend and exercise core pillars of democracy: the fundamental rights and freedoms of working people and trade unions.
There are obvious signs that governments and companies are accelerating their efforts to trample on these basic rights that underpin the very nature of democracy and the rule of law.
Governments and their leaders are failing workers at a time when they are increasingly faced with impossible daily choices, such as whether to feed their children or clothe them. As millions of households struggle in a debilitating scenario of squeezed incomes and an entrenched cost-of-living crisis, policymakers and business leaders are actively restricting workers’ rights to collectively demand fairer wages or to legally exercise their right to strike.
With repeated calls for fair wages and conditions are being ignored and governments are actively attacking the right to strike and collective bargaining, workers’ faith in democracy is crumbling.
Almost nine out of 10 countries worldwide violated the right to strike, while about eight in 10 countries denied workers the right to bargain collectively for better terms and conditions. In a deeply worrying development this year, 49 per cent of countries arbitrarily arrested or detained trade union members, up from 46 per cent in 2023, while more than four in 10 countries denied or constrained freedom of speech or assembly.
These figures and trends reinforce a global picture in which hard-won democratic rights and civil liberties are under grave and relentless attack. Australia scores a middling ‘3’ – the same as last year. While there are laws in place supposedly protecting union rights, there are several barriers which have been identified
Read more: Global Rights Index - International Trade Union Confederation The full report can be downloaded from this page 2024_ituc_global_rights_index_en.pdf (ituc-csi.org)