Class Warfare Intensifies as Labor Rights Violated Around the World

As in past years, there is not a single country on Earth that fully protects workers’ rights. And although every country continues to violate labor rights, the extent of those violations grows, continuing a sad pattern of class warfare. 

The International Trade Union Confederation has issued its annual Global Rights Index, and only 12 countries managed to be listed in the Index’s top ranking, the countries that are merely “sporadic” violators of rights. But those countries are hardly paradises (this is capitalism, after all). One of those dozen, the Netherlands, had no less than seven of its corporations listed among companies violating workers’ rights. Those were not necessarily isolated instances. The report said, “In the Netherlands, unions observed an increasing trend to shift from sectoral agreements to company agreements with the intent of minimizing labor costs in return for employability. 

Companies often used the competitiveness and employability argument with their employees to incite them to accept lower conditions of work at the enterprise level. In addition, companies, including Ryanair, Transavia, Jumbo Supermarkets, Gall & Gall, Action and Lidl supermarkets, tended to circumvent collective bargaining with representative unions.” 

If that represents the “best” of conditions for working people, the world is a mighty unfair place. Which it obviously is, given the ever more intense pressure bearing down on working people as the neoliberal era continues to make capitalism ever more miserable for those whose work produces the profits swelling the pockets of industrialists and financiers. 

As in past years, the Global Rights Index report divides the world’s countries into five categories with increasing levels of rights violations. They are as follows: 

1. Sporadic violations of rights: 12 countries including Germany, Ireland, Norway and Uruguay (green on map above).
2. Repeated violations of rights: 26 countries including Canada, France, Japan and New Zealand (yellow on map).
3. Regular violations of rights: 24 countries including Argentina, Australia, Britain and South Africa (light orange on map).
4. Systematic violations of rights: 41 countries including Chile, Mexico, Nigeria and the United States (dark orange on map).
5. No guarantee of rights: 32 countries including Brazil, China, Colombia and Turkey (red on map).

5+ No guarantee of rights due to breakdown of the rule of law: 9 countries including Libya and Syria (dark red on map). 

Hypocritical finger-wagging 

Consistent with past years of the Global Rights Index, the United States, which loves to hold itself up as an exemplar of democracy and civil rights, is among the lowest-ranking countries — the U.S. has consistently had a ranking of 4 for “systemic” violations. The International Trade Union Confederation, in supplemental materials discussing U.S. violations, noted that the National Labor Relations Board has made a series of anti-union rulings, including allowing retaliation against striking Wal-Mart workers, while U.S. law permits anti-union discrimination, restricts workers’ rights to form unions of their own choosing, and places severe barriers against union organizing. 

The United Kingdom, second only to the U.S. in regular scolding of other countries, is ranked in the middle of the pack, same as a year ago. The report’s discussion of Britain reported “the number of people employed on a stand-by basis, “zero-hour contracts,” at between 200,000 to 250,000 which demonstrates the prevalence of underemployment in the UK. Under these contracts, employees have to be available for work but are not guaranteed a minimum number of hours. These contracts create income insecurity for workers and also undermine family life.” Additionally, the report noted multiple barriers to British union organizing. 

Canada, although ranked higher than Britain or the U.S., is no paradise despite the image its governments like to project. The report noted that in Canada there are many categories of workers, ranging from domestics to professionals, barred from organizing, and there are severe legal restrictions limiting the right to strike. 

Globally, the report states that violations of workers’ rights are at a seven-year high. Direct attacks on unions highlight the degradation: 

“The trends by governments and employers to restrict the rights of workers through violations of collective bargaining and the right to strike, and excluding workers from unions, have been made worse in 2020 by an increase in the number of countries which impede the registration of unions — denying workers both representation and rights. . . .A new trend identified in 2020 shows a number of scandals over government surveillance of trade union leaders, in an attempt to instill fear and put pressure on independent unions and their members.” 

The global pandemic has only made conditions worse: 

“These threats to workers, our economies and democracy were endemic in workplaces and countries before the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted lives and livelihoods. In many countries, the existing repression of unions and the refusal of governments to respect rights and engage in social dialogue has exposed workers to illness and death and left countries unable to fight the pandemic effectively.” 

Class warfare goes on and on and on 

Some of the sobering statistics gathered by the International Trade Union Confederation tell a grim story:

* 85 percent of countries violated the right to strike.

* 80 percent of countries violated the right to collectively bargain.

* Workers were arrested and detained in 61 countries.

*  Workers experienced violence in 51 countries. 

The Confederation, which describes itself as a coalition of “national trade union centres” encompassing 332 affiliated organizations in 163 countries and territories, determines its ratings by checking adherence to a list of 97 standards derived from International Labor Organization conventions. Those 97 standards pertain to civil liberties, the right to establish or join unions, trade union activities, the right to collective bargaining and the right to strike. 

The Confederation’s report is one more illustration of the race to the bottom. The International Labor Organization estimates that more than 470 million people worldwide were unemployed, underemployed or “marginally attached to the workforce” in a report issued in January 2020, with 2 billion people (61 percent of the global workforce!) informally employed. That report was issued just before the Covid-19 pandemic took hold, triggering a dramatic economic crash that had been overdue, thanks to the instability of capitalism that regularly causes downturns. Inequality and lower pay are endemic around the world, and the costs of housing, because it is a capitalist commodity, rises far faster than incomes. The continual imposition of austerity on working people contrasts dramatically with the trillions of dollars thrown at financiers and industrialists since the pandemic began. 

Capitalism promises nothing but more one-sided class warfare.  We’re long past due to try something different. 

(Pete Dolack writes the Systemic Disorder blog and has been an activist with several groups. His first book, It’s Not Over: Learning From the Socialist Experiment, is available from Zero Books and he has completed the text for his second book, What Do We Need Bosses For? This piece appeared on CounterPunch.org.) Photo: Nathaniel St. Clair. Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.