New ITUC Global Rights Index - The world’s worst countries for workers

International Trade Union Confederation - 19 May 2014

A global leaderboard in the race to protect workers’ rights was released today at the ITUC World Congress in Berlin. The ITUC Global Rights Index ranks 139 countries against 97 internationally recognised indicators to assess where workers’ rights are best protected, in law and in practice.

“Countries such as Denmark and Uruguay led the way through their strong labour laws, but perhaps surprisingly, the likes of Greece, the United States and Hong Kong, lagged behind,” said ITUC general secretary Sharan Burrow. “A country’s level of development proved to be a poor indicator of whether it respected basic rights to bargain collectively, strike for decent conditions, or simply join a union at all.”
The International Trade Union Confederation has been collecting data on the abuse of trade union rights around the world for the past 30 years. Now for the first time the ITUC Global Rights Index presents carefully verified information from the last 12 months in an easy-to-use format so that every government and business can see how their laws and supply chains stack up.
Cambodia’s labour law fails to cover many civil servants, there are undue restrictions on the right to elect union representatives, and in 2013 the government responded with lethal force to demonstrators seeking a decent wage and working conditions. This resulted in Cambodia receiving a score of 5 in the Rights Index – the worst possible rating other than for those countries where the rule of law has completely broken down.
In the Middle East, Qatar is yet to allow unions at all for its many migrant workers, while in Latin America, Guatemala was one of the worst places to be a worker, with no guarantee of rights.
Key findings:

• In the past year, governments of at least 35 countries have arrested or imprisoned workers as a tactic to resist demands for democratic rights, decent wages, safer working conditions and secure jobs.
• In at least 9 countries murder and disappearance of workers were commonly used to intimidate workers.
• Workers in at least 53 countries have been dismissed or suspended for attempting to negotiate better working conditions.
• Laws and practices in at least 87 countries exclude certain type of workers from the right to strike.

READ MORE....