BRUSSELS, Belgium—For the first time, the International Trade Union Confederation’s Global Rights “watch list” of nations where worker rights are declining or in danger includes the United States.
And the details of the listing make it clear that, as far as the global union group is concerned, the reason is Donald Trump and his anti-labor policies.
The ITUC is one of two main international labor federations. The other, the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), is more militant and rooted in the socialist, communist, and other progressive movements. The ITUC is generally more conservative. Each represents different tendencies in the global labor movement.
The ITUC, in its new warning about worker rights in the U.S., specifically cited the Republican president’s trashing of union contracts covering more than a million federal workers. It also said Trump’s attacks on worker rights are part of a larger worldwide retreat on enforcement of those rights in capitalist countries. The other six nations ITUC added to its lengthening watch list are Guinea-Bissau, Israel, Liberia, Moldova, the Philippines, and Zimbabwe.
ITUC cited Israel because of its repression of Palestinian unions and, in the Gaza genocide, deliberate destruction of their offices. Israel’s army has “crushed workers’ rights and economic activity” and arrested at least 12,000 Palestinian workers since October 2023, ITUC reported.
According to the report, the ten worst nations for workers’ rights are Argentina and Panama (added this year), Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), Belarus, Myanmar (Burma), Tunisia, Ecuador, Turkey, Nigeria, and Egypt.
The ITUC report comes in advance of a June 4 House Education and the Workforce Committee oversight hearing over the National Labor Relations Board, which is now under Trump’s control. The panel’s Republican majority is loaded with anti-worker and anti-union elements.
The ITUC report on June 1 was the second discussion of worker rights in the U.S. by an international organization within a month. The first was a non-binding advisory decision by the International Court of Justice reaffirming workers’ right to strike under International Labour Organization conventions.
For its part, the WFTU said that the ILO decision “reaffirms the WFTU position that without the right to strike, there can be no effective implementation of freedom of association, the right to organize, and the right of workers’ organizations to organize their administration and activities and to formulate their programs.”
However, the ITUC’s warning does not have any legal force behind it. And the court’s advisory opinion elaborated on an International Labour Organization convention which the U.S. ratified in 1951, committing the nation to upholding the right to collective bargaining, including the right to strike.
But there’s no enforcement of that convention, either. Early in the late President John J. Sweeney’s tenure, the AFL-CIO sued North Carolina before the ILO for violating it by banning public workers from collective bargaining, but the ILO did not follow up.
Still, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler called attention to both the U.S. presence on the watch list and the reaffirmation of the right to strike.
“For the first time since the ITUC began this report, the United States is less safe and less free for working people, and it’s a stark warning about the state of democracy in our country,” Shuler said.
“We’ve seen the reality firsthand: The stripping of one million federal workers’ collective bargaining rights, the gutting of workplace health and safety agencies and protections, the eviscerating of the National Labor Relations Board, the crackdown on immigrant workers’ rights, the rollback of freedom of speech, and more.
“These attacks on our rights and fundamental freedoms don’t just stay on the jobsite. When workers are denied a voice and the freedom to organize, and are unable to hold the rich and powerful accountable, democracy itself is weakened,” she said.
“But workers are fighting back. Across the country, workers are organizing and standing together to protect their rights and build a better future. The labor movement will continue to defend the freedom to organize, the freedom to collectively bargain, and the right of every worker to be treated with dignity and respect on the job. America’s workers deserve better, and we’re not backing down.”
“We are facing a billionaire coup against democracy,” said Luc Triangle of Belgium, ITUC’s General Secretary. “The freedoms and rights people rely on to maintain the most basic living standards and fair working conditions are under concerted attack by a tiny minority focused on the accumulation of wealth and power at the expense of all of us.
“Billionaires across the world are colluding with political leaders, often on the right or far right, to consolidate power and eliminate rights. In this coup, unions are in the crosshairs because the workers they represent form the bedrock of democratic systems. Fighting for their rights from the frontlines… workers and their unions defend the very pillars of democracy, prosperity, and freedom.
“The tactics vary, but those behind them share a common purpose: To stop democracy from delivering for workers,” Triangle said.
By contrast, Shuler lauded the International Court’s advisory opinion even though it has no force of law, either. She called its pro-strike stand “historic.”
“The right to strike is protected under international law,” Shuler declared, and, thanks to the ILO, has been for more than 70 years, along with being “essential…to the right to organize.” The WFTU played a decisive role in that decision, particularly its attorney Augusto Praca.
“The international court’s advisory decision affirms decades of precedent and what workers around the world know: There is no right to organize and bargain collectively without the right to strike,” Shuler said.
“When workers are barred from taking collective action on the job, they cannot defend their rights and demand the workplace conditions and contracts they are owed. The freedom to join a union becomes an empty formality.
“At a moment when workers’ organizations face sustained attacks around the world, this opinion reaffirms the freedom to withhold one’s labor is not a privilege granted by the powerful, but a fundamental human right grounded in international law.”
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