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	There will be no end to poverty while workers are receiving poverty wages by Olivier De Schutter, Luc Triangle ITUC, OHCHR, Social Europe Journal, agencies   Oct. 2023   Workers will remain trapped in poverty until governments respect trade union rights, by Olivier De Schutter and Luc Triangle. (Equal Times)   The unrelenting violations of trade union rights documented by the International Trade Union Confederation’s (ITUC) Global Rights Index over the past ten years have led to wages being kept pitifully low. To fix this injustice governments must respect existing trade union rights and, where necessary, strengthen them.   Most poor people in the world work, yet they do not earn enough to provide a decent standard of living for themselves or their dependents. Even before Covid-19, more than one in five workers lived in poverty (surviving on less than US$3.10 per day), with 8 per cent in extreme poverty (US$1.90 per day).   The global share of wealth that goes to wages has, in fact, been declining for years, with real wages stagnating even as employers have seen the productivity of their workers grow.   Soaring inflation has eaten further into workers’ already stagnating wages, income inequality is accelerating, and the global gender pay gap remains above 20 per cent. The first half of 2022 saw the first negative growth of global wages this century, with monthly wages falling in real terms by 0.9 per cent.   There will be no end to poverty while workers are receiving poverty wages. A major reason why wages remain so low is the weakening of trade unions.   Basic workers’ right have been undermined worldwide for some time, and the ITUC Global Rights Index has detailed a decade of attacks and restrictions on the right of working people to organise unions to demand a fair share of economic prosperity.   In 2023, the Index showed that 77 per cent of countries denied workers the right to form and join a union, 73 per cent impeded union registration and 79 per cent violated the right to collective bargaining.   Legally, these are violations of international human rights law and International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions that require governments to guarantee the right of each worker to form and join trade unions and to protect them from intimidation and reprisals.   Wages are not a neat calculation based on supply and demand and the price of labour; they are born from a bargaining process. It is the role of unions to represent working people in this process. Weakened unions mean a weakened bargaining position for workers who are unable to win improved wages in negotiations.   In fact, studies have shown that union members earn more than workers who are not members by between 10 and 25 per cent. While in some unionised workplaces this wage premium can be lower, it will be because all the workers, including the non-union members, benefit from pay rates negotiated by unions.   Until governments uphold trade union rights actively, forcefully and publicly, some workers will refrain from organising out of fear of reprisals.   This chilling effect will continue to artificially suppress membership, further weakening the ability of unions to protect workers’ rights and secure just wages – which should be set at a level that either corresponds to the ‘living wage’, allowing the worker and their family an adequate standard of living, or at least 60 per cent of the median wage in the country, whichever is highest.   In 2014, the ITUC Global Rights Index reported that 63 per cent of countries had violated this right; by 2023 that figure had risen to 79 per cent, with no countries in some regions of the world maintaining this basic right. Governments must come out in defence of collective bargaining – a plea Olivier De Schutter will take to the United Nations General Assembly in New York this month where he will present his new report, The working poor: a human rights approach to wages.   Until governments safeguard this right and stop interfering by imposing excessive requirements on the process, the essential role of workers’ unions to negotiate pay rises will be seriously stifled, workers will continue to see their salaries suppressed and there will be no escape from poverty for a large proportion of the world’s workers.   * Olivier De Schutter is the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Luc Triangle is acting general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation.   http://www.equaltimes.org/workers-will-remain-trapped-in http://www.ips-journal.eu/topics/future-of-social-democracy/what-a-living-wage-really-means-in-todays-cost-of-living-crisis-7059/ http://undocs.org/Home/Mobile?FinalSymbol=A/78/175 http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/06/job-guarantee-could-address-biggest-employment-challenges-our-time-un-expert http://www.srpoverty.org/   July 2023   Attacks on workers’ rights are on the rise—in no region of the world can they be taken for granted any longer, by Luc Triangle.   Before you can set out the solution to a problem, you need to know its scale. When it comes to attacks on workers’ rights, the tenth edition of the Global Rights Index published by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) shows clearly that the problem is big—and getting bigger. But the solution is also clear, embodied in a new social contract which can build a better world for working people.   The 2023 index provides shocking evidence that the foundations of democracy are under attack, with a clear link between the vindication of workers’ rights and the strength of any democracy. The erosion of one, conversely, amounts to degradation of the other.   Europe has long considered itself a bastion of democracy and workers’ rights. Its overall rating since the first index has however crumbled, from 1.84 in 2014 to 2.56 in 2023 (one is the best rating, five-plus the worst). In the criteria of the index, this amounts to somewhere between repeated and regular violations of rights.   Workers in Belarus, Kazakhstan and Turkey face surveillance, imprisonment and brutality from regimes that share autocratic traits. Working people even in the Netherlands and Belgium have seen a tightening of restrictions and refusal by governments and employers to negotiate with trade-union representatives.   In France, lawful protests demanding dialogue with trade unions on an alternative to the pensions reform pushed by the president, Emmanuel Macron, have met vicious police beatings, indiscriminate arrests and tear gas. In the United Kingdom, union-busting, attempts to introduce legislation curtailing the right to strike and protest, and violations of collective-bargaining agreements have become endemic and led to the country’s rating dropping to four—systematic violations of rights.   Across the world, in both high- and low-income countries, even though working people have faced a historic cost-of-living crisis and spiralling inflation driven by corporate greed, governments have cracked down on the right to negotiate wage rises collectively and take strike action.   According to the 2023 index, nine out of ten countries violate the right to strike, with working people in Canada, Togo, Iran, Cambodia and Spain facing criminal prosecution or dismissal. Eight out of ten violate the right to collective bargaining.   Seventy-seven per cent of countries exclude working people from the right to establish or join a trade union, with migrant, domestic and temporary workers, those in the informal economy, platform workers and workers in special economic zones denied the right to freedom of association. Burundi, Haiti, India, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates are among the countries excluding working people from union representation.   The right to free speech and assembly is restricted in 42 per cent of countries, often resulting in protesting workers facing police brutality. In Iran, teachers have been arrested and beaten by the police for taking part in May Day demonstrations.   Seventy-three per cent of countries impede the registration of unions or ban them, including Belarus, Myanmar, Hong Kong, the Central African Republic and Guatemala. Workers have been arrested and detained in 69 countries and in 65 per cent working people have no or restricted access to justice.   Workers have experienced violence in 44 countries. In the Asia-Pacific region, the incidence of violence against working people has risen from 43 per cent of countries in 2022 to 48 per cent in 2023 and from 42 to 53 per cent in the middle east and north Africa. Trade unionists have been killed in eight countries.   The 2023 index indicates that the ten worst countries for working people are: Bangladesh, Belarus, Ecuador, Egypt, Eswatini, Guatemala, Myanmar, Tunisia, the Philippines and Turkey. In Ecuador, mass protests calling for democracy and collective rights, organised by indigenous peoples’ organisations and trade unions, have been brutally repressed. In Tunisia, the president, Kais Saied, has undermined workers’ civil liberties and democratic institutions.   We see the line between autocracies and democracies blurring. When dialogue between states and citizens breaks down, when nations flirt with autocracy to pass unpopular laws, when parliaments are pushed aside and when governments deploy state forces to quell lawful resistance, then democracy is on the line and working people suffer the consequences.   To repair the fabric of our societies, to renew and establish democracy and to support working people we need a new social contract based on decent jobs, just wages, social protection, fundamental rights—including safe and secure work—and the assurance of equality and inclusion. That was the unanimous call of the ITUC’s Melbourne congress last November and it is more crucial than ever to restore democracy, equality and decency, and to give workers their fair share of economic growth.   In many countries we see that trust in government is broken and the far right is stepping into the breach, to sow division and further threaten fundamental liberties. It is thus essential to rebuild trust and ensure our democracies are fit for purpose to meet the needs of working people and the demands of an uncertain future—a future where the climate crisis, technological change, challenges to public health and geopolitical instability will continue to generate shocks.   Working people must be listened to and they must be at the centre of government decisions. To articulate and advance this, workers’ unions in turn have never been more essential. The global trade union movement, led by the ITUC, will act in solidarity—an attack on one of us is an attack on all—and raise its voice loud and clear against any violations of workers’ rights.   http://www.socialeurope.eu/the-global-rights-index-and-building-a-better-world http://peopleoverprof.it/news Visit the related web page
	Human rights defenders & business in 2022 by Business & Human Rights Resource Centre   July 2023   Overcoming barriers to access to justice for corporate human rights abuses. (FIDH, agencies)   As the UN continues to negotiate a Binding Treaty on Business & Human Rights, access to justice for victims of corporate human rights abuses must be a top priority. In a new advocacy paper, FIDH and three NGOs provide recommendations for Treaty provisions to address or mitigate obstacles to effective justice.   24 July 2023. The Comision Colombiana de Juristas (CCJ), the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) have published today a new advocacy paper calling for practical provisions for access to justice in the draft UN Binding Treaty on Business & Human Rights.   Since 2014, a UN Intergovernmental Working Group has been mandated to elaborate an international legally binding instrument to regulate the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises.   This Binding Treaty aims to complement and go beyond the existing soft law standards such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. While these non-binding guidelines have helped make some progress, they have not been able to eliminate major gaps in the protection of human rights from corporate human rights abuses.   In Overcoming Barriers to Access to Justice for Corporate Human Rights Abuses, FIDH, ICJ, ECCHR and CCJ offer an overview of the different obstacles to accessing justice and remedy. Individuals and communities who have seen their rights violated by transnational corporations continue to face an unfair burden of proof, high financial costs and limited access to information that could support their claims. The new paper presents recommendations to address these issues through specific drafting language for the Treaty, alongside examples of international, regional and national good practices and laws that could guide the way forward.   A few months before the ninth session of negotiations on the Treaty begins in Geneva, it is crucial that states shaping the text make access to justice for victims their central concern.   http://www.fidh.org/en/issues/business-human-rights-environment/business-and-human-rights/overcoming-barriers-to-access-to-justice-for-corporate-human-rights http://ishr.ch/latest-updates/hrc52-next-steps-toward-a-binding-treaty-on-business-and-human-rights/ http://www.business-humanrights.org/en/big-issues/binding-treaty/bridging-the-gap-a-stronger-binding-treaty-for-all-webinar-series-2/ http://www.business-humanrights.org/en/big-issues/binding-treaty/ http://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/wg-trans-corp/session9 http://www.fidh.org/en/issues/business-human-rights-environment/rights-campaigners-call-on-policy-makers-in-the-eu-and-beyond-to-end   Mar. 2023   Human rights defenders & business in 2022, a report from Business & Human Rights Resource Centre   “All over the world the positive achievements of human rights defenders too often go unrecognised. Defenders are targeted because they confront powerful vested interests by protecting our natural resources and shared climate, defending labour rights, exposing corruption, and refusing to accept injustice.   As we mark the 25th anniversary of the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, States can and should do more to protect defenders, including by passing mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence legislation that requires businesses to engage in ongoing, meaningful engagement with defenders and other stakeholders. - Mary Lawlor, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights Defenders   Every day, people across the globe are taking action to protect their communities, environments, and livelihoods from irresponsible business practice and demanding that companies uphold their responsibility to respect human rights, sometimes at great personal cost. Our data tracking attacks against these human rights defenders reveals the majority are against people raising concerns about harm to our shared environment.   This includes community members using direct action to stop logging in conservation areas in Malaysia, Indigenous leaders in Mexico protecting rivers and local biodiversity from harms caused by hydroelectric projects, and journalists reporting on environmental pollution in Serbia.   Despite the significant challenges they face, defenders are achieving victories worldwide. In 2022 defenders in Sierra Leone successfully advocated for a new law protecting customary land rights and banning industrial development in protected and ecologically sensitive areas; environmental justice groups in Louisiana’s “cancer alley” in the United States halted two large petrochemical projects; garment workers in Pakistan’s Sindh province won a 40% increase in minimum wage; women human rights defenders were elected to senior political positions in Brazil and Colombia, and after years of advocacy by Indigenous women leaders and organisations, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women adopted General Recommendation 39 on Indigenous Women and Girls - the first language in a binding international treaty focused on the rights of Indigenous women and girls.   Yet, human rights defenders continue to face intolerable levels of risk and harm. In their vital work to promote human rights and protect the environment, they confront powerful actors and interests. They raise concerns about companies and investors engaged in irresponsible practice, governments failing in their duty to protect human rights, and other non-state actors profiting from environmental destruction.   They do this work in increasingly restrictive environments, where anti-protest, terrorism, defamation, and “foreign agent” laws are used to silence dissent.   According to CIVICUS, 2022 was marked by a serious decline in civic space, with only 3% of the world’s population living in countries with open civic space, where the freedoms of peaceful assembly, association, and expression are respected.   The scale of lethal and non-lethal attacks against people defending our rights, natural resources, and environment from business-related harms shows the failure of governments to protect human rights and that voluntary action by companies and investors is insufficient to prevent, stop, and remedy harm.   It reinforces the need for mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence legislation grounded in safe, ongoing and effective rights-holder engagement, respect for the process of free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) of Indigenous peoples, and strong safeguards for human rights defenders, as well as further government action to protect the people who are at the forefront of protecting our planet.   Between January 2015 – March 2023, the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre tracked more than 4,700 attacks against human rights defenders raising concerns about harmful business practice.   In 2022 alone, we tracked 555 attacks, revealing that on average more than 10 defenders were attacked every single week for raising legitimate concerns about irresponsible business activity. Three-quarters of attacks (75%) were against climate, land and environmental defenders.   Over a fifth of attacks (23%) were against Indigenous defenders, who are protecting over 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity, although they comprise approximately 6% of the global population.   This is just the tip of the iceberg. Our research is based on publicly available information and as many attacks, especially non-lethal attacks (including death threats, judicial harassment and physical violence), never make it to media sources and there is a significant gap in government monitoring of attacks, the problem is even more severe than these figures indicate. Attacks against human rights and environmental defenders occur in every region of the world.   Defenders are subjected to a range of attacks, including both killings and non-lethal attacks, such as threats, smear campaigns, arbitrary arrest, strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs), and physical and sexual violence. Most (86%) of the attacks we tracked in 2022 were non-lethal, which are often precursors to lethal violence and warning signs to States to increase protection efforts.   Non-lethal attacks are generally left uninvestigated and unpunished, which can have a chilling effect on the work of defenders and promote impunity that feeds further violence where defenders persist in their critical work. The Esperanza Protocol, launched in December 2021 by civil society organisations and experts in international law, provides guidelines based on international human rights law to support the investigation, prosecution and punishment of threats against defenders by governments and ultimately create an enabling environment for the defence of human rights worldwide.   While the protocol largely focuses on the duty of States, it also notes business actors must ensure their activities, actions, and omissions do not lead to threats against defenders and address any harms to defenders.   Many governments are not only failing in their duty to protect human rights but also actively targeting defenders through their legal systems or facilitating use of these systems by private actors to target defenders. Judicial harassment, which includes arbitrary detention, unfair trials, and other forms of criminalisation, continues to be prevalent worldwide.   It also includes strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs), lawsuits initiated or brought by business actors against people and groups for exercising their rights to participate in, comment on, or criticise matters of public concern.   Judicial harassment causes significant stress and harm to defenders and diverts time away from their human rights work while draining their resources. It can have a chilling effect, deterring others from speaking out against abuse. Jointly, these forms of judicial harassment comprised nearly half (47%) of the cases we tracked in 2022 and 51% of cases since 2015.   Attacks against defenders occur in relation to almost every business sector in every region of the world. The four most dangerous sectors in 2022 related to natural resources. Short term profit-driven extractive approaches which have underpinned the global energy model are core drivers of attacks on defenders and have not provided many of the economic benefits or development promised to communities and countries..   http://www.business-humanrights.org/en/from-us/briefings/hrds-2022/human-rights-defenders-business-in-2022-people-challenging-corporate-power-to-protect-our-planet/ http://ishr.ch/25-years-un-declaration-on-human-rights-defenders/ Visit the related web page
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