SAMMY JULIAN
OUR dear country, once again, found itself included in someone’s “worst” list.
The 2014 Global Rights Index by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has tagged the Philippines as one of the worst countries for workers.
ITUC has built the world’s most comprehensive data base of violations of workers’ rights. Descriptive texts detailing facts on real-world violations faced by workers have been published in the survey since 1983.
The organization puts abusive governments and companies on notice that the international trade union movement stands in solidarity with workers who are denied fundamental rights.
The country, based on ITUC’s Index, earned a “5” rating, which meant “no guarantee of rights.”
Countries with the rating of 5 are the worst countries in the world to work in.
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 labor practices.
The organization’s other ratings include a 5+ for “no guarantee of rights due to the breakdown of the rule of law,” 4 for “systematic violation of rights,” 3 for “regular violation of rights,” 2 for “repeated violation of rights” and 1 for “irregular violation of rights.”
The ITUC Global Rights Index covers violations in 139 countries recorded over the past 12 months from April 2013 to March 2014.
The methodology is grounded in standards of fundamental rights at work, in particular the right to freedom of association, the right to collective bargaining and the right to strike.
These rights are based on international human rights law, which was spelled out in the form of 97 indicators to translate narrative text into numerical ratings.
Countries are then rated in clusters from 1 to 5, depending on their compliance with collective labor rights.
The level of economic development, size or location of the country is not taken into account, given that fundamental rights are universal and workers in all parts of the world must have access to them.
A high-rated cluster means that workers in the country have no right to their collective voice due to government failure to guarantee rights.
In the vast majority of these cases, the ITUC added that the national legislation offered either no protection or did not provide dissuasive sanctions to hold abusive employers accountable.
To the “worst” places in the world for workers: consider yourself warned!
Your failure to protect your own workers will be exposed sooner or later. We now demand change and decent jobs./PN
