Copyright 2000 InterPress Service, all rights reserved.
Worldwide distribution via the APC networks.
*** 28-May-00 ***
Title: LABOUR: World's Trade Unions Under Siege
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
MEXICO CITY, May 28 (IPS World Desk) - The lot of workers around the
globe is a sorry one, with many intimidated, threatened and even murdered
if 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 of
association and the effective right to collective bargaining, adds the
report, titled "Your Voice at Work."
"We are still a long way from universal acceptance of these fundamental
principles and rights in practise," the Geneva-based body observes,
adding that governments, as guardians of democracy, need to do more than
"pay lip service" to these ideals.
For Juan Somavia, the director general of the ILO, such a global real ity
leads to one conclusion. "A global economy in which people do not have the
rights to organise will lack social legitimacy," he says. After all, 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 "outright prohibitions on trade unions." In
nearby countries such as Bahrain and Qatar, it adds, government
constraints 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
and Guatemala, in Latin America, to Zimbabwe and Sudan, in Africa,
"physical assaults" have been a common form of intimidation.
While in 20 other countries - China, El Salvador, Morocco and Pakistan
including - "arrests and detention" have been evident, in seven others,
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 "Your Voice at Work", equally disturbing has
been another global trend to deny a large category of workers any form of
legal protection due to the type of their labour or their legal status.
They include agricultural, domestic and migrant workers.
In the United States, India and Honduras, for instance, national
legislatures have either failed to "legally protect agricultural wo rkers
or (denied) them the right to organise", 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 "seriously restricted in forming
or joining trade unions in Kuwait, effectively prohibited from holding
office in Mauritania, Nicaragua, Rwanda and Venezuela, and not covered by
labour legislation in Kyrgyzstan".
The current crop of export processing zones (EPZs) also came under the
critical gaze of the ILO report for anti-union acts, which include
"harassment, blacklisting and massive dismissals" of the labour force.
EPZs in Bangladesh, the Philippines and Sri Lanka were singled out for
going against the grain of labour rights in an effort to attract foreign
investments.
But while local authorities may believe that very low wages and no labour
regulations will attract business, "the 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 relations", 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.
"These changes have had an inherent gender dimension," they say.
Surveys done for this report reveal that women form "the majority of
workers in subcontracted, temporary or casual work, part-time work and
informal occupations". As a result, "more women than men are in
unorganised and unprotected jobs which lack security of tenure",
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
enable them to "take their place at the negotiating table" during the
collective bargaining process.
Likewise, in addressing the broader global picture, the report advocates
change in three areas to ensure that the right to trade union activity is
guaranteed across the globe. Such action, it stresses, requires collective
effort on the part of workers, employers and governments.
These changes are: a guarantee that all workers can form and join a trade
union of their choice without fear of intimidation or reprisal; the need
to encourage an open and constructive attitude by private business and
public employers to freely choose worker's representatives; and the
recognition by public authorities that good governance of the labour
market, based on 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 Declaration on
Fundamental Principles of and Rights at Work, adopted in June 1998, is 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
evidence it provides to expose the oppression workers around the world
have been subject to. "Workers in many countries continue to face
intimidation or reprisals should they exercise (their) rights by joining a
trade union of their choice."
(END/IPS/LB/mmm/da/00)
Origin: Rome/LABOUR/
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[c] 2000, InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS)
All rights reserved
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