Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 19 - 25 October 2000 Issue No. 504
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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Union is a lonely business

By Faiza Rady

Trade union rights are human rights. They form the very basis on which social justice can be built. -- Bill Jordan, general secretary of the ICFTU

On 18 February of last year, 72-year-old veteran trade unionist Julio Alfonso Poveda was on his way home after a hard day's work in the Colombian capital, Bogota. Stuck in the evening's slow-moving rush-hour traffic and easily identifiable, Poveda was shot and killed by an unknown assassin. By the end of the year, the Bogota police investigation had made no progress in finding the killer and the cold-blooded murder remains unresolved.

Poveda was only one of 69 Colombian trade unionists who died because of their commitment to continuing the struggle for workers' rights despite an increasingly threatening corporatist anti-union environment. Central America is notorious for being the most dangerous place for workers in the world. Continent-wide, 90 trade unionists were murdered last year -- twice as many as on any other continent, and about 70 per cent of those arrested worldwide for carrying out trade union activities were from Central America.

Denouncing the global expression of violence against trade unionists, Bill Jordan, general secretary of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), explained in this year's report by the organisation that the prevailing political corporatist culture treats repression with impunity. "Demanding payment of wage arrears, calling for improved working conditions, asking for dialogue and negotiations ... these are the only 'crimes' that have led to people being killed or thrown in jail," said Jordan.

In our epoch of sweeping globalisation and commensurate assaults on workers' rights to organise and demand better working conditions, trade union activism has in effect become an explosive issue. Although the 1990s witnessed an astounding proliferation of international agreements codifying workers' rights -- and focusing, in particular, on the allegedly inalienable right to organise -- union busting is on the rise worldwide, stated the ICFTU.

The world's largest international trade union organisation, with affiliated national centres in 145 countries, the ICFTU represents more than 123 million workers worldwide. The latest ICFTU report documents violations of trade union rights in 113 countries in 1999, but however detailed, the report only skims the top of the iceberg, warns Jordan. Many governments suppress and cover up vital information about gross workers' rights violations and entire regions of the world have outlawed independent unions. A case in point is the Middle East, where trade unions are either banned outright, or closely controlled by the authorities. "The workers are subject to massive rights abuses, but very little concrete information can be obtained from these countries," the report said.

The ICFTU denounces national governments for brutally suppressing workers' rights to organise. Worldwide, nearly 3,000 people were arrested and more than 1,500 were injured, beaten or tortured by police and other so-called security forces last year because of legitimate trade union activities. At least 5,800 trade unionists were harassed and another 700 received death threats.

This was especially true in Colombia, where scores of trade unionists were forced to go underground or even flee the country. Brothers Ricardo and Eduardo Solis, trade union leaders from Cali, testified in the report that they had been subjected to persistent death threats and other forms of persecution for over a year. They finally had to leave their home and their country. Like many other prominent trade unionists, the Solis brothers had been threatened by the sinister paramilitary group Autodefenses Unidas des Colombia, suspected of working as a shadowy and murderous auxiliary of the Colombian armed forces.

In league with the transnationals, national governments function to defend and secure the corporations' exorbitant profits at the expense of decent wages and health and welfare benefits for workers. Since the early 1980s, governments worldwide have effectively engaged in sweeping union-busting sprees, while publicly posturing as defenders of workers' rights and paying lip service to their alleged compliance with international trade agreements to which they are signatories.

Complying instead with the dictates of the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), governments introduced legislative attacks on organised labour as part of economic reform packages. Workers on the African continent were hard hit with sweeping repression of trade unionism. Eighty per cent of the world total prison sentences for union activities were given in Africa, and the legislation of 23 of the 31 African countries covered by the report contains restrictive measures on the right to strike.

The anti-labour campaign was also particularly effective on the North American continent. In the United States, freedom of association and the right to strike is limited. At least one in 10 union supporters campaigning to form a union is illegally fired. Instances of extreme exploitation of foreign workers, in particular, are on the rise, and national labour legislation does not cover agricultural and domestic workers and certain kinds of supervisory workers. In addition, approximately 40 per cent of all public workers -- or nearly seven million people -- are denied basic collective bargaining rights.

In Canada, anti-labour legislation has likewise compromised the collective bargaining rights of entire sectors of the workforce. The provinces of Alberta and New Brunswick deny workers in agriculture and horticulture the right to organise and bargain collectively. In Ontario, agricultural workers, domestic workers, architects, dentists, land surveyors, lawyers and doctors are excluded from the legal framework protecting trade union rights since 1995. Moreover, the Education Quality Improvement Act of 1997 interfered in the collective bargaining of teachers. The Canadian government also regularly passes "back-to-work" legislation as potent strike-breaking and union-busting mechanisms.

While the Americas have achieved a brilliant record for passing union-busting legislation (ranked third by the report), they by no means hold the record for undermining workers' rights. The Asia Pacific region has achieved the dubious distinction of topping the list for institutionalising legal obstacles to the formation and functioning of trade unions, followed closely by the Middle East.

The report consequently denounces national governments' widespread and consistent violations of two of the UN International Labour Organisation's (ILO) most ratified conventions: Convention 87, on freedom of association (ratified by 130 countries), and Convention 98, on the right to organise and bargain collectively (ratified by 145 countries).

In this context, the ICFTU condemns national governments' public sloganeering for political expediency, while bypassing binding international labour codes. In Jordan's words: "This year's report gives an opportunity to denounce the prevailing hypocrisy which sees government officials parading at international gatherings, ostensibly promoting basic workers' rights, while those who actually defend those fundamental rights at home are being harassed, attacked, threatened, sidelined or silenced -- sometimes forever."

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