Right to establish and join a trade union

Certain categories of public employees are still denied the right to freedom of association, such as judges in Morocco.

On 4 September 2020, Lebanon’s Labour Ministry adopted the new standard unified contract for migrant domestic workers, estimated at 250,000 in the country. Under the provisions, domestic workers were allowed to terminate their contract without the consent of their employer and were provided key labour guarantees already afforded to other workers, such as a 48-hour work week, a weekly rest day, overtime pay, sick pay, annual leave, and the national minimum wage, with some permissible deductions for housing and food.

However, on 30 October 2020, Lebanon’s State Shura Council, the country’s top administrative court, delivered a sharp blow to migrant domestic workers’ rights by suspending the implementation of a new standard unified contract. The Syndicate of the Owners of Recruitment Agencies submitted a complaint to the Shura Council on 21 September requesting that the council block and annul the labour minister’s decision and cap the permissible deductions an employer can make from a domestic worker’s salary – equivalent to the national minimum wage – at 30 per cent. The Shura Council ruled in favour of the recruitment agencies on the grounds that these decisions comprised “severe damage” to the agencies’ interests.

Since 2017, Qatar has engaged in a set of important reforms to abolish the kafala (sponsorship) system and extend labour protections to migrant workers in the country. In January 2020, Qatar adopted two ministerial decrees allowing employees to change employers at any time during their contract (by removing the No Objection Certificate) and to leave the country either temporarily or permanently without having to obtain the permission of their employers (by abolishing the exit visa requirement).

On 20 March 2021, Qatar’s non-discriminatory minimum wage came into force, applying to all workers, of all nationalities, in all sectors, including domestic workers. In addition to the minimum monthly basic wage of 1,000 Qatari riyals (US$275), the legislation stipulates that employers must pay allowances of at least 300 Qatari riyals and 500 Qatari riyals for food and housing, respectively, if they do not provide workers with these directly. More than 400,000 workers, that is, 20% of the private sector, will benefit directly through wage increases from the new law.

Certain categories of public employees are still denied the right to freedom of association, such as firefighters and prison staff in Japan.

In 2020, 56 Tunisian workers employed by Gartex were dismissed, including elected leaders of the works union and members of the advisory committee, for attempting to raise workplace safety issues with the management. This was not the first time that Gartex retaliated against its workers. In 2018, the union's general secretary and his deputy were sacked after organising a meeting with workers to discuss workplace issues.

On 11 February 2020, workers at the Marriott Sheraton Grand Conakry, Guinea, voted, with 96% of votes in favour, to form a union and elected their leaders. The lengthy process had begun in March 2019. Throughout, hotel management tried all possible means to stop the election. However, only a few months after the union election, management at the Marriot commenced retaliatory suspension and firings, claiming fallacious pretexts to do so.

In August 2020, General Secretary Amadou Diallo and Deputy General Secretary Alhassane Diallo of the new union (FHTRC-ONSLG) met with management to express their serious disagreement with the proposed termination of a colleague for breaking a vase. Within days, hotel management suspended the two union leaders without pay and terminated them on 28 September. To this date, Amadou Diallo and Alhassane Diallo still await their reinstatement.

In early 2020, the Footwear and Tanners Allied Workers Union of Zimbabwe (FTAWUZ), a ZCTU affiliate, submitted to the shoemaking company Bata a list of over 500 workers they had organised into a union and requested that the company remit to the union the deductions of union subscription through the check-off system. Bata flatly refused to proceed, claiming that workers, members of FTAWUZ, were also members of another union and using the pretext that during the COVID-19 lockdown, the check-off agreement was not applicable. To date, more than 200 of the unionised employees are still being denied recognition of their union rights.

On 17 June 2020, workers at Greenfield Industry held a meeting to form a factory level union of Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers Democratic Union (C.CAWDU) and elected eleven union officials. Three days later, the human resources department summoned the eleven elected officials and informed them that the company could not renew their employment contracts due to a lack of orders and poor performance by the workers. As the union president disputed these made-up justifications, the company threatened the union officials, telling them to resign from C.CAWDU or face repercussions. The local union president, vice president, secretary and treasurer were dismissed, as they refused to sign the resignation letter presented to them. Six other union officials signed the letter and quit C.CAWDU under duress.

In June 2020, 3,000 Bangladeshi garment workers were dismissed as part of a union-busting exercise from three factories owned by the same company: Saybolt Tex, Tanaz Fashion and Windy Wet & Dry Process factories in Gazipur and Dhaka, Bangladesh. The three unionised factories are owned by the Windy Group (which owns an additional five non-unionised factories). 1,600 workers were fired from SAYBOLT TEX, 1,200 from Tanaz Fashion and 200 from Windy Wet & Dry Process. The dismissed workers have been staging hunger strikes and other protests at Windy Group factory premises to call for reinstatement.

On 27 April 2020, food delivery service Foodora Canada announced that it would be leaving the Canadian market effective 11 May and filed for bankruptcy, stating its “inability to turn a profit and the saturation of the Canadian food delivery market” as the reasons for its departure. However, the timing was suspect, as the announcement came in the context of an ongoing application for certification by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) before the Ontario Labour Relations Board, which, on 25 February 2020, had handed down a decision recognising that Foodora couriers were dependent contractors and therefore entitled to collectively bargain. That decision allowed the union certification votes, sealed since August 2019, to be counted. In June 2020, the results were announced: almost 90 percent of Foodora couriers voted in favour of unionising with CUPW, becoming the first app-based workers in Canada to successfully unionise. In August 2020, CUPW and Foodora couriers celebrated a win as CUPW and Delivery Hero, the parent company for Foodora Canada, reached a settlement of Can$3.46 million to compensate the couriers.

In 2020, Uber, Lyft and Doordash mounted the most expensive campaign in California’s history, Proposition 22, to fight AB5, a new state law that classified certain categories of gig workers as employees. AB5 would have mandated that platform companies employ drivers and pay for health care, unemployment insurance and other benefits. Spending over 200 million US dollars to blanket the state with ads to get its message to voters, the platform giants managed to win the ballot on 5 November 2020, allowing gig economy companies to be exempt from AB5 and to continue treating drivers as independent contractors. As a concession to labour advocates, the initiative offered limited benefits, such as a wage promise and health insurance stipend. In early January 2021, the Service Employees International Union and a group of ride-hailing drivers petitioned the state Supreme Court to invalidate Proposition 22.

Despite huge profits earning producers US$10 billion annually, Ecuador’s banana industry remained unchallenged by the demands of workers’ unions. Unionising remained difficult in Ecuador, with only one per cent of banana workers involved in labour unions due to fear of blacklisting and threats of violence, including in multinational companies like Fyffes.

Meanwhile, working conditions in the banana industry were dismal. Half of the workers exceeded 14-hour workdays and were paid an average of USD$3.50 each day – less than the minimum wage. They were also required to meet certain production targets to be paid at all. Producers also reduced costs and took advantage of lax labour laws by hiring employees as “permanent temporary” workers. These poor working conditions affected more than 200,000 Ecuadorians in the industry.

In Costa Rica, the bus company Tapachula retaliated against a group of drivers for joining the ANEP union and summarily dismissed them from their posts.

Since its legal recognition on 27 November 2019, the Trade Union of United Miners of Bulqiza (SMBB) has been faced with systematic dismissals of its members. The chairman of the union, Elton Debreshi, was dismissed by AlbChrome, the biggest chromium mining company operating in Albania, only days after the union formation. In response, the workers went on strike, demanding the reinstatement of their union leader. In the days that followed, other union leaders and activists were temporarily detained and interrogated by the police.

While the strike was ended by workers on the promise by the local labour inspectorate that the issue of the dismissal of trade unionists would be swiftly reviewed, in December 2019, AlbChrome fired three other members of the union executive committee: Beqir Duriçi, Behar Gjimi and Ali Gjeta. In addition, many workers were threatened with dismissal if they joined the new union or continued to be members. Since then, SMBB has taken the dismissal cases to court and to the commissioner for protection from discrimination (CPD). In November 2020, the CPD concluded that the leaders of SMBB had been discriminated against by AlbChrome due to their trade union activity. Meanwhile, the court cases were still pending and the four union leaders were still awaiting their reinstatement.

In Turkey, unions have long been faced with employers’ discriminatory tactics aimed at avoiding union formation in the workplace. The most common practice is to fire enough union members to bring the numbers below the recognition threshold. In the metal industry, Özer Elektrik, an electrical appliances producer, fired ten union members before Birleşik Metal-İş, which had organised the majority of workers in the company, could apply for certification to the Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Services in July 2020. In addition, Özer Elektrik called security forces to disperse union members who had gathered to protest. Union leaders were taken into custody to frighten the workers away from union membership.

Similarly, in August 2020, shortly before Türk Metal filed its petition for recognition, cable manufacturer Ünal Kablo fired 31 union members, bringing the numbers below the threshold. Another union, Özçelik-İş, applied for collective bargaining certification at Sampa Otomotiv, showing that it represented a majority of workers. The company responded by dismissing 71 union members.

On 31 December 2020, the Court of Bologna in Italy considered that the purportedly objective algorithm, developed by food-delivery platform Deliveroo to allocate orders, discriminated against riders who took strike action and therefore ordered the company to pay damages to the trade unions that had initiated the case. The court found it to be the conscious choice of management to subordinate riders through a discriminatory reputational system which downgrades in the same way, without distinction, both those who are absent for trivial reasons and those who abstain from delivery due to exercising the right to strike. The court therefore considered that the evaluation model adopted by Deliveroo was the result of the conscious choice of the company to privilege the availability of the rider and to penalise couriers who exercised their right to strike.