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Freedom of association and collective bargaining – the right to join a trade union – are enshrined within ETI’s Base Code as a basic labour standard. Ensuring workers are represented is also a key pillar in our 2015-2020 strategy. That’s why we’re reading with a lot of interest, the latest report by the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Association, Maina Kiai.
Although labour rights are sometimes seen as distinct from more general human rights, UN Special Rapporteur Maina Kiai believes that this rationale is “false – and ultimately destructive”.
Kiai argues that rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association are the “foundation for the exercise of all labour rights” because they are “the vehicle that protects workers’ ability to meet, organize and have a collective voice”.
His latest report – a study on the exercise of assembly and association rights in the workplace, with a focus on marginalized workers – will be formally launched at the 71st session of the UN General Assembly on 20 October although advance copies and a related fact sheet are already available.
In the report, Kiai finds that the most marginalized sections of the world’s labour force are particularly at risk. These include informal, migrant and domestic workers amongst others.
Many governments are failing
Kiai says that although under international law, governments are required to respect and promote workers’ rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, many are failing, and appallingly so.
He worries that governments’ power to regulate business has been eroded, and in some cases been voluntarily ceded, in order to attract investment.
Consequently, Kiai is concerned that many workers find themselves excluded from national legal protective frameworks, while some are not even defined as “workers”, leaving then without access to remedy when their rights are violated. And that those most at risk are marginalised workers.
On the report’s introductory webpage, it further states that:
"Poor enforcement of these rights in the workplace can also exacerbate global inequality, poverty, violence, child and forced labour, and directly contributes to problems such as human trafficking and slavery. For this reason, the Special Rapporteur concludes that the trend of prioritizing economic and corporate interests at the expense of workers’ rights is not only a rights issue; it has the potential to undermine the viability of the world’s economic system."
At a time when many are questioning the merits and value of globalisation, the report is an important read. Not only for all those interested in ensuring that all workers in global supply chains are neither exploited nor discriminated against, but also for those interested in the future global economic outlook.
But final words should go Kiai: “Labour rights are human rights, and the ability to exercise these rights in the workplace is prerequisite for workers to enjoy a broad range of other rights, whether economic, social, cultural, political or otherwise.”