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	Shrinking democratic space for working people revealed in ITUC Global Rights Index by Sharan Burrow International Trade Union Confederation   Shrinking democratic space for working people and unchecked corporate greed are on the rise according to the annual ITUC Global Rights Index. The number of countries with arbitrary arrests and detention of workers increased from 44 in 2017 to 59 in 2018, and freedom of speech was constrained in 54 countries.   “Democracy is under attack in countries that fail to guarantee people’s right to organise, speak out and take action. Brazil passed laws that denied freedom of association, China restricted free speech and the military was used to suppress labour disputes in Indonesia,” said Sharan Burrow, General Secretary, International Trade Union Confederation.   More countries are excluding workers from labour law – from migrant workers, public sector employees to workers in platform businesses, with 65% of countries excluding whole categories of workers from labour law.   “Decent work and democratic rights grew weaker in almost all countries, while inequality continued to grow. This was fuelled by the outrageous behaviour of a number of multinational companies, whose anti-union practices are denying workers freedom of association and collective bargaining rights”, said Burrow.   The ITUC Global Rights Index 2018 ranks 142 countries against 97 internationally recognised indicators to assess where workers’ rights are best protected in law and in practice.   The report’s key findings include:   65% of countries exclude some groups of workers from labour law. 87% of countries have violated the right to strike. 81% of countries deny some or all workers collective bargaining.   Out of 142 countries surveyed, 54 deny or constrain free speech and freedom of assembly. The number of countries in which workers are exposed to physical violence and threats increased by 10% (from 59 to 65) and include Bahrain, Honduras, Italy and Pakistan. Countries where workers are arrested and detained increased from 44 in 2017 to 59 in 2018.   Trade unionists were murdered in nine countries - Brazil, China, Colombia, Guatemala, Guinea, Mexico, Niger, Nigeria and Tanzania.   “From attacks on civil liberties, the arbitrary arrest, detention and imprisonment of workers, the erosion of collective bargaining and the increasing criminalisation of the right to strike to the exclusion of workers from labour protection, violations of workers’ rights are on the rise. This is a global threat to democracy and security. Governments must act in the interest of working people. They need to change the rules to stop the violations and end corporate greed,” said Burrow.   The report ranks the ten worst countries for workers’ rights in 2018 as Algeria, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Colombia, Egypt, Guatemala, Kazakhstan, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.   Haiti, Kenya, Macedonia, Mauritania and Spain have all seen their rankings worsen in 2018 with a rise in attacks on workers’ rights in law and practice.   The Middle East and North Africa was again the worst region for treatment of workers, with the kafala system in the Gulf still enslaving millions of people. The absolute denial of basic workers’ rights remained in place in Saudi Arabia. Conflict in Libya, Palestine, Syria and Yemen has led to the breakdown of the rule of law and the denial of the right to find a decent job.   Peaceful protests were violently repressed and attempts at forming an independent labour movement were systematically crushed by the authorities in Algeria and Egypt.   Conditions in Asia-Pacific have deteriorated with an increase in violence, criminalisation of the right to the strike and a rise in arrests, detention and imprisonment of labour activists and trade union leaders. All 22 countries in the region violated collective bargaining and the right to strike.   Mass dismissals of workers for exercising their rights were found in Indonesia, where 4,200 workers were laid off by mining operator PT Freeport; Myanmar, where 184 union members were made redundant; and Cambodia, where 558 workers were fired after a strike at the Gawon Apparel Factory.   In Africa, workers were exposed to physical violence in 65% of countries in the region. Protests in Nigeria were violently repressed by the army, and one worker was killed by unknown gunmen during a strike.   In Europe, 58% of countries violated collective bargaining rights, and three quarters of countries violated the right to strike.   The Americas remain plagued by the pervasive climate of extreme violence and repression against workers and union members; in Colombia alone 19 trade unionists were murdered last year – a dramatic rise from 11 in the previous year.   The ITUC has been collecting data on violations of workers’ rights to trade union membership and collective bargaining around the world for more than 30 years. This is the fifth year the ITUC has presented its findings through the Global Rights Index, putting a unique and comprehensive spotlight on how government laws and business practices have deteriorated or improved in the last 12 months.   The three global trends for workers’ rights identified in the 2018 Global Rights Index are shrinking democratic space, unchecked corporate influence and the importance of legislation.   “The power of democracy to change the rules was shown with newly elected governments in Iceland, Canada and New Zealand acting in the interests of working people, with laws to close the gender pay gap, provide paid domestic violence leave and increase wages for care workers. The challenge for governments is to govern for people, not for corporate interests, and make laws that respect international labour standards and keep open the democratic space that gives workers a voice in their community and workplaces. Without this we face an insecure and fractured world,” said Burrow.   http://www.ituc-csi.org/RI19 http://www.ituc-csi.org/ituc-global-rights-index-2018-20299   Aug. 2018   China’s labor movement seeks justice, by Michelle Chen. (The Nation)   In July, Jasic, a large welding-machinery plant in the southern city of Shenzhen, erupted in protest after the managers tried to thwart a unionization campaign waged by local workers with support from student labor activists. The workers had complained of being treated “like slaves,” robbed of wages, and subjected to “illegal last-minute adjustment of employees’ schedules, an illegal system of fines, underpayment of employees’ housing funds, and the illegal compilation of a blacklist divulging employees’ information.”   Initially, the organizers believed they could move forward with unionizing after gaining the approval of the local branch of China’s official labor organization, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU). On July 23, the local Pingshan district branch of the union announced that a deal had been reached to establish a formal union at the Jasic plant.   However, the management soon showed it was less than pleased with the prospect of having to collectively bargain with workers, and below the surface a few business-friendly union officials seemed to agree. So the next day brought yet another shock: a lockout of protesting workers as they cried, “We want to be reinstated! We want to unionize!”   According to the Hong Kong–based watchdog group China Labour Bulletin, Mi Jiuping, a worker and organizer for the Jasic factory, declared in a “now deleted” social-media post: “Is unionising illegal, evil or frightening?… nobody can stop us from building our own union, nobody can destroy our solidarity.”   The standoff has gotten more attention than other worker protests in the country, but such clashes are not unusual in the boom-bust tumult of China’s new coastal manufacturing towns. Shenzhen is a crown jewel of China’s new economic model, one of Guangdong Province’s Special Economic Zones, built on an influx of low-wage rural labor. But recent years have brought a slowdown in urban development in the city, paralleled by increasingly precarious labor conditions.   The Jasic workers’ advocates report that authorities have been brutally suppressing the organizing efforts “by illegally transferring the employees to different posts,” then firing and “defaming” them. Police have reportedly attacked and arrested workers, galvanizing a group of “concerned students” to mobilize in a solidarity campaign that has since spread nationwide.   According to Jenny Chan, a labor scholar based in Hong Kong, during this summer break, students from more than a dozen universities “have joined hands with the Jasic workers” by launching online petition drives, establishing legal-aid clinics, and collaborated on local grassroots organizing with activists from the migrant-worker-advocacy center. Their radicalism might even defy the warnings of university officials and professors.   For those studying the law, Chan adds, the real-life struggles of the workers are a place to apply the lessons of the classroom: “It’s a contested space (putting the law into practice) the leading students are supporting Jasic workers to strengthen their associational power in the form of a trade union.”   Although many of the earlier detainees have been released, tensions have escalated with further arrests and the alleged kidnapping of a local activist, Shen Mengyu. Colleagues say she was snatched by the police in August near the factory. But the authorities have denied that the incident was an abduction, telling Reuters the incident was “a matter regarding a family dispute.”   The police crackdown in Pingshan reflects President Xi Jinping’s aggressive agenda of imposing political order and consolidating his executive power through tight social controls. Pacifying civil society activism is seen as critical for Beijing’s economic agenda as it seeks to build out its investments across Asia, the Middle East, and Africa; all the while thwarting a trade war with the United States.   Since Xi also recently expanded his office by ensuring his virtual “presidency for life,” the infrastructure of repression has tightened its grip on social movements and political dissent, deploying extensive surveillance and censorship across civil society and the media.   Yet labor observers say that worker unrest, in the form of strikes and protests, has not been significantly chilled by state pressure. According to Geoffrey Crothall of China Labour Bulletin, aggrieved employees with or without union representation “often have no choice but to take collective action in order to get their voices heard and for their grievances to be addressed.   There are simply too many protests for the authorities to clamp down on, and since the vast majority of cases involve workers demanding what they are legally entitled to (their wages, for example), repressive action would be counterproductive.”   And eventually protests often do get the goods. Despite the lack of official channels for advocacy, rabble rousing workers have successfully wrested concessions through workplace activism, sometimes with support from local officials who also have an interest in busting bad bosses.   In many disputes that have been resolved through direct negotiations, Crothall adds, “it is safe to say that the local government officials would not have got involved at all unless the workers had staged collective protests.”   Meanwhile, students’ radical solidarity campaigns; a bold challenge to officials who have castigated the Jasic movement show that labor rights and democracy can no longer be thought of as separate pillars of civil society. Chan sees the uprising in Shenzhen as a sign that workers are joining an increasingly educated, politically awakened generation of students, to fight for political freedom and economic security as twin fundamentals of a modern Chinese future:   ''University students share concerns about fair labor in an age of contracting and temporary work. They identify with Jasic workers that a functioning union that wins the trust and confidence of workers is a worthy effort of workers and students''.   The unyielding battle for social and economic justice from the bottom-up at Jasic and other workplaces has written a new page in contemporary Chinese society.   The worker-student solidarity shows that the next chapter of China’s rise could be co-authored by a movement of labor and intelligentsia, jointly creating a new political language for the world’s largest working class. http://bit.ly/2Q9erkG   * One Day, produced by the global union federation Public Services International is a series of short films featuring workers spanning the globe. These films feature struggles against privatisation, austerity and neoliberalism and campaigns for trade union rights, disaster preparedness and access to quality public services: http://oneday.world-psi.org/ Visit the related web page
	Nicaragua must end witch-hunt against dissenting voices by United Nations News   Dec. 2018   Oxfam condemns cancellation of legal registration of the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights.   Oxfam condemns the Nicaraguan National Assembly’s decision yesterday to cancel the legal registration of the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH), the country’s most prominent human rights organization.   “No context justifies cancelling the legal registration of organizations defending human rights. Such measures increase the vulnerability of Nicaragua’s citizens in the face of growing human rights violations and abuses committed by the Nicaraguan government, and further distance us from the possibility of reaching a solution to the crisis in the country,” said Simon Ticehurst, Oxfam Regional Director in Latin America and the Caribbean.   “We are gravely concerned by increasing attacks on and threats against civil society in Latin America. Organizations complying with the law, their mandate and objectives are being criminalized. It is the duty of States to preserve and protect civil society, not attack it,” added Ticehurst. http://bit.ly/2QDCpZ4   Aug. 2018   Following weeks of civil unrest in Nicaragua, a group of 11 UN independent human rights experts has urged the Government to stop the violent repression of protestors, which has left at least 317 people dead and 1,830 injured, stressing that "no one should be detained for the exercise of their human rights”.   “We are appalled that many human rights defenders, journalists and other opposition voices are being criminalised and accused of unfounded and overly punitive charges such as ’terrorism’,” the UN experts said, warning that this is “creating an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty among different communities and among civil society representatives in the country.”   Street protests against social security reforms began in April and were immediately violently suppressed by security forces and groups affiliated with the governing party. One hundred days later, the protests have “decreased in number and intensity following the removal of roadblocks by the Government” according to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), but the UN experts said that dissident voices - ranging from rural community leaders and students, to journalists and Catholic Church leaders – are still being subjected to intimidation, threats, collective detention.   “We deplore what appears to be a smear campaign aimed at discrediting or vilifying human rights defenders as ‘terrorists’ and ‘coup-mongers’, and apparent attempts to undermine the opposition,” the human rights experts’ statement read.   “We are also deeply concerned that new legislation adopted earlier in July by the Nicaraguan Congress to target money laundering, terrorist financing and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, could provide the authorities with increased leeway for arrests and criminal proceedings against protesters, and be misused,” the UN experts stressed.   “Impunity, violence and repression have never been a breeding ground for peace and stability and will certainly, on the contrary, plunge the country into deeper social and political unrest,” the experts warned.   They reminded the Government of the importance of keeping a clear and up-to-date record of the names and locations of people who have been deprived of their liberties and stressed that those who face legal proceedings must be guaranteed their right to a fair trial, with all the guarantees of due process.   “We exhort the Government of Nicaragua to immediately demobilise paramilitary groups and to investigate the extrajudicial executions, killings and reports of enforced disappearances with due diligence, without delay and through the use of effective, impartial and independent procedures,” the statement read.   “We also urge the Government to refrain from engaging in practices of criminalisation against human rights defenders and other activists, including through the inappropriate use of national security and counter-terrorism legislation,” said the independent experts, requesting that full access into detention centres and other locations be granted to human rights groups so they can continue assessing the situation in the country. http://bit.ly/2nr8nH7 Visit the related web page
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