The ITUC is a confederation of national trade union centers which campaigns for labour rights around the globe. It has 325 affiliated organisation in 161 countries and territories in 5 continents and works closely with several UN agencies specialising in labour issues.
“The guarantee of the free exercise of workers’ rights is also a guarantee of a more equal and a more prosperous society. When workers enjoy the freedom of a collective voice, can bargain for safe workplaces and fair wages and conditions and are free from discrimination then productivity and economic growth can flourish,” the organisation writes.
This is the first time that the ITUc has assembled the data it collects into a Global Rights Index (pdf) allowing governments, NGOs and other interested parties to directly compare country standings with regards to worker protections.
In assembling the index, the ITUC assessed 97 indicators related to standards of fundamental rights at work, ‘in particular the right to freedom of association, the right to collective bargaining and the right to strike.’ Countries were given numerical ratings for each of these indicators and then given a final score of 1-5 with (1 being best and 5 being worst). Some war-torn countries such as the Central African Republic characterized by a collapse in governance and the rule of law were given a score of 5+.
Greece was among the countries given a score of 5 placing it in the category of countries with ‘no guarantee of rights’. In such countries according to the ITUC, ““while the legislation may spell out certain rights workers have effectively no access to these rights and are therefore exposed to autocratic regimes and unfair labour practices.”
“Countries such as Denmark and Uruguay led the way through their strong labour laws, but perhaps surprisingly, the likes of Greece, the United States [with a score of 4] and Hong Kong, lagged behind,” said ITUC general secretary Sharan Burrow in a press release. “A country’s level of development proved to be a poor indicator of whether it respected basic rights to bargain collectively, strike for decent conditions, or simply join a union at all.”
More detailed information about Greece is available in the ITUC’s file about the country. This details a number of legal measures restricting the collective bargaining power of workers and trade unions, and the right to strike. The vast majority of these are measures that have been passed by the government in the past few years at the demand of the country’s Troika of lenders.
In particular the file lists a number of, “recent significant interventions in the system of collective bargaining [that] have been aimed at reducing wages in the private sector and essentially replacing collective bargaining not simply with enterprise agreements but with individual contracts.”
According to the report the Greek banks played a leading role in weakening collective bargaining rights from as early as 2009. “Banks in Greece have in recent years systematically pursued a strategy of avoiding sectoral-level collective bargaining. The largest banks and the Hellenic Bank Association EET (which does not consider itself an employers’ organisation) have refused to negotiate with the Greek Federation of Bank Employee Unions (OTOE), preferring to bargain at the company level and to implement individualised pay schemes,” the file writes.
The ITUC also notes a number of interventions weakening the right to strike, in particular the government invocation of emergency laws to bring an end to teacher and ship-worker strikes in 2013.
The Global Index highlights the disparity in worker protections between Greece and other EU member states. Greece was by far the worst performing country, with no other EU member state receiving a final score of 5 or 4. The EU states receiving a score of 3 include Bulgaria the UK, Poland and Portugal while the countries at the top with a ranking of 1 include France, Germany, Belgium, Italy and Denmark. Top rankings were not restricted to the most prosperous countries however, with Montenegro, Estonia and Slovakia also attaining the top score.
(Thanks to reader Ioakim Vravas for bringing this story to our attention)