ITUC: The situation with the Belarusian trade unions - among the worst in the world

The employers’ group had blocked discussion of some of the worst cases of worker rights violations at the annual ILO conference in Geneva.

Since 1926, the conference has discussed the most serious cases included in the annual report of the ILO’s Committee of Experts, a 17-member committee of eminent and independent international jurists. This, year the International Organisation of Employers (IOE) has refused to discuss any cases.

Sharan Burrow, ITUC General Secretary, said “Employers at the ILO are trying to keep the worst abuses under wraps and avoid the international scrutiny which could help save lives and tackle some of the most appalling attacks on the rights of working people. Last year, 29 trade unionists were murdered in Colombia, but employers don’t think the ILO should even discuss that, nor the terrible campaign of violence against trade unionists in Guatemala or Swaziland. Egyptians are in the midst of a battle for their most basic rights to decent work, but employers seem to be siding with the military and fundamentalist forces both of which want to deprive workers of a voice. The IOE has also refused to allow discussion of the withdrawal of collective bargaining rights in Greece and Spain, where plummeting incomes are worsening the country’s economic plight and other serious cases where decent labour laws are under attack. Employer organisations are playing a dangerous political game at the ILO, even as some individual companies are themselves increasingly prepared to discuss workers’ rights openly and frankly.

Employers have hijacked the process based on a misplaced ideological conviction that the right to strike, guaranteed under numerous laws, domestic constitutions and international instruments, poses a threat to corporate greed.

“Employer groups are trying to undermine one of the most effective human rights mechanisms in the international system. This might help some of their least responsible member companies make some more profit and sustain governments which allow or even encourage violence against working people, but this will be at the cost of lives and livelihoods of some of the world’s most vulnerable workers,” said Burrow.