LABOUR: World’s Trade Unions Under Siege

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

MEXICO CITY, May 28 2000 (IPS) - The lot of workers around the globe is a sorry one, with many intimidated, threatened and even murdered i f they attempt to form trade unions to bargain for their collective rights, states a new report released by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

This is largely the result of the failure of the ILO’s 175 members to meet their commitments to protect such fundamental rights as the freedom o f association and the effective right to collective bargaining, adds th e report, titled ôYour Voice at Work.ö

ôWe are still a long way from universal acceptance of these fundame ntal principles and rights in practise,ö the Geneva-based body observes, adding that governments, as guardians of democracy, need to do more than ôpay lip serviceö to these ideals.

For Juan Somavia, the director general of the ILO, such a global real ity leads to one conclusion. ôA global economy in which people do not h ave the rights to organise will lack social legitimacy,ö he says. After al l, he points out, people organise themselves to make their voices heard so they can express such fundamental rights as their human rights and their developmental rights.

This report, the first-ever global study conducted by the ILO on the freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining, comes out strongly against oil-rich Arab nations such as Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for the ôoutright prohibitions on trade unions ..ö In nearby countries such as Bahrain and Qatar, it adds, government const raints have denied committees of workers or labour councils the opportunity to form independent workers’ organisations.

Violence against labour rights activists, on the other hand, has prev ailed in several developing countries. In countries ranging from Ecuador an d Guatemala, in Latin America, to Zimbabwe and Sudan, in Africa, ôphy sical assaultsö have been a common form of intimidation.

While in 20 other countries – China, El Salvador, Morocco and Pakista n including – ôarrests and detentionö have been evident, in seven o thers, among them Nicaragua, Lebanon and Senegal, trade union premises and property have been attacked.

During the past 10 years, the report declares, the ILO has also docum ented the allegations of murder of trade unionists in Colombia, the Dominic an Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala and Indonesia.

According to the authors of ôYour Voice at Work”, equally disturbin g has been another global trend to deny a large category of workers any fo rm of legal protection due to the type of their labour or their legal statu s. They include agricultural, domestic and migrant workers.

In the United States, India and Honduras, for instance, national legislatures have either failed to ôlegally protect agricultural wo rkers or (denied) them the right to organiseö, the report says. And domestic workers, who are overwhelmingly women, have been denied the right to organise in countries like Brazil, Jordan and Canada.

Migrant workers, furthermore, have been ôseriously restricted in fo rming or joining trade unions in Kuwait, effectively prohibited from holding o ffice in Mauritania, Nicaragua, Rwanda and Venezuela, and not covered by la bour legislation in Kyrgyzstanö.

The current crop of export processing zones (EPZs) also came under th e critical gaze of the ILO report for anti-union acts, which include ôharassment, blacklisting and massive dismissalsö of the labour f orce.

EPZs in Bangladesh, the Philippines and Sri Lanka were singled out fo r going against the grain of labour rights in an effort to attract fore ign investments.

But while local authorities may believe that very low wages and no la bour regulations will attract business, ôthe investor may well be ready to accept higher costs if there is political stability, infrastructure, domestic demand for produced goods and services, and well- functioning industrial relationsö, the report says.

The impact of the prevailing trend on women working in both the forma l and informal global economy was not lost on the authors, either. ôThese changes have had an inherent gender dimension,ö they say.

Surveys done for this report reveal that women form ôthe majority o f workers in subcontracted, temporary or casual work, part-time work an d informal occupationsö. As a result, ômore women than men are in unorganised and unprotected jobs which lack security of tenureö, perpetuating poverty in families.

But for that to change, the report calls for two immediate responses. Firstly women must be granted the right to join trade unions, to have their interests represented on par with their male colleagues, and to enabl e them to ôtake their place at the negotiating tableö during the collect ive bargaining process.

Likewise, in addressing the broader global picture, the report advoca tes change in three areas to ensure that the right to trade union activit y is guaranteed across the globe. Such action, it stresses, requires colle ctive effort on the part of workers, employers and governments.

These changes are: a guarantee that all workers can form and join a t rade union of their choice without fear of intimidation or reprisal; the n eed to encourage an open and constructive attitude by private business and p ublic employers to freely choose worker’s representatives; and the recogn ition by public authorities that good governance of the labour market, based o n respect for fundamental principles and rights at work, makes a major contribution to stable economic, political and social development.

This report, which forms part of the follow-up to the ILO’s Declara tion on Fundamental Principles of and Rights at Work, adopted in June 1998, i s the first in an annual series to provide a global picture of core labour standards. It will be followed by a report on forced labour in 2001, child labour in 2002, and discrimination in employment in 2003.

According to Somavia, the strength of this inaugural effort is the ev idence it provides to expose the oppression workers around the world have be en subject to. ôWorkers in many countries continue to face intimidatio n or reprisals should they exercise (their) rights by joining a trade unio n of their choice.ö