Brussels, 17/09/2007 (Agence Europe) - One year after it came into being, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) published, on 18 September, its first annual report on violations of trade union rights in the world. The report, covering 138 countries, reveals that, in 2006, 144 trade unionists were murdered (compared with 115 in 2005) for defending workers' rights, and more than 800 others suffered beatings or torture. The ITUC report details nearly 5,000 arrests and over 8,000 dismissals of workers for their trade union activities. 484 new cases of trade unionists being held in detention by governments in 2006 are also documented in the report. ITUC General Secretary Guy Ryder called on governments “to face up to their responsibilities to make sure that global standards adopted at the International Labour Organisation (ILO) are fully respected everywhere in the world”. The main conclusions of the union report are:
In Europe, systematic repression of independent trade unionism remained a feature in Belarus. The European Union has pledged to withdraw trade preference benefits, the report says, in response to the refusal of the Alexander Lukashenko regime to respect core ILO standards. In Azerbaijan and Turkey, employers were responsible for serious anti-union harassment. Government interference in legitimate trade union affairs was documented in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Lithuania and Moldova. Labour law changes in Russia and Georgia also undermined respect for union representation and collective bargaining rights.
The report states governments' growing hostility towards workers' fundamental rights in some industrial countries, notably Australia and the United States. The report states that, in Australia, the government's “WorkChoices” legislation has stripped workers of a raft of rights and benefits. In the United States, millions of workers have been deprived of the right to organise following a National Labor Relations Board ruling, which extends the definition of the term “supervisor”, who has been given free rein to act, said the ITUC spokesman. The anti-union activities of various multinational companies was also revealed in the 2007 report which names repeat offenders such as Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart, Goodyear, Nestlé and Bouygues. The report describes, too, repression by suppliers to well-known global brand names, especially in the textiles and agriculture sectors.
In Latin America, Colombia remained the world's most dangerous place for union activists, with 78 killings, almost all carried out with impunity by paramilitary death squads linked to government officials or acting at the behest of employers. Elsewhere, two miners were killed by police in Mexico, and, in Ecuador, 15 people were seriously injured during brutal repression by the police and army of a union-organised demonstration against the free trade agreement with the United States. The report also exposes anti-union activities by Export Processing Zone employers and by plantation owners, including large-scale dismissals and intimidation of workers in Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua.
In Asia, there was a wave of anti-union violence in the Philippines with the murders of 33 trade unionists and workers' rights supporters, in some cases by killers acting in collusion with the military and police. In Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Sri Lanka, repression of workers' rights included the dismissal of some 5,000 workers for their union activities.
Africa was not spared blatant violations of rights to union organisation and representation, with Guinea, Morocco and South Africa among those criticised. In Zimbabwe, the government continued its violent repression of the country's trade union movement. The report notes that dictatorships and authoritarian governments in Belarus, Burma/Myanmar, China, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, North Korea and several Gulf states continued to impose severe restrictions on independent trade unions. The full ITUC report is available at http: //survey07.ituc-csi.org (gb)