Middle East and North Africa

4.53

Systematic violations of rights

Worse than last year

Middle East and North Africa is the worst region for working people

  • Exclusion of workers from labour protections

  • Dismantling of independent unions

  • Prosecuting and sentencing of workers participating in strikes

In 2022, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) continued to be the world’s worst region for workers’ rights, with an average rating of 4.53 and increase from last years 4.50 average, falling between systematic violations and no guarantee of rights.

Libya, Palestine, Syria and Yemen were still beset with conflict, severely trampling fundamental liberties and rights of workers. Despite efforts in several Gulf countries, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia, to end the kafala system, migrant workers, who represent the majority of the working population in the region, remained exposed to severe human rights abuses, notably in the United Arab Emirates. In Tunisia, democracy was gravely undermined, and workers’ civil liberties were put into jeopardy as President Kais Saied dissolved the parliament and assumed direct power.

At a glance

100%

100% of countries violated the right to collective bargaining.

Compared with 94% in 2021
100%

All 19 countries excluded workers from the right to establish and join a trade union.

No change from 2021
100%

All 19 countries impeded the registration of unions.

No change from 2021
95%

95% of countries violated the right to strike.

Compared with 94% in 2021
84%

84% of countries in the Middle East and North Africa restricted free speech and assembly.

Compared with 83% in 2021
79%

79% of countries in the Middle East and North Africa denied workers access to justice.

Compared with 83% in 2021
47%

47% of countries arrested and detained workers.

Compared with 44% in 2021
42%

Workers experienced violent attacks in 42% of countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

Compared with 44% in 2021

Workers were murdered in Iraq.

Workers' rights violations

Right to collective bargaining

63%79%

Countries violating the right to collective bargaining increased from 63% of countries in 2014 to 79% of countries in 2022.

54%

54% of countries violated the right to collective bargaining.

No change from 2021
76%

76% of countries violated the right to collective bargaining.

Compared with 72% in 2021
93%

93% of countries violated the right to collective bargaining.

Compared with 95% in 2021
100%

100% of countries violated the right to collective bargaining.

Compared with 94% in 2021
83%

83% of countries violated the right to collective bargaining.

Compared with 91% in 2021

Right to collective bargaining

In May 2021, Santander Brazil enforced a 55 per cent pay cut on 40 bank union leaders and workers after they made a legal challenge to be paid for overtime hours. Brazil contributes to the biggest slice of profits for Spanish multinational Santander, but instead of paying these workers what they were due, the Brazilian arm of the bank demoted them and hacked their pay by more than half. Facing this arbitrary cut, the bank workers went to court and were able to secure a judgement that restored their pay grade and salaries. However, Santander Brazil has failed to comply with the order despite incurring daily fines due to non-compliance.

Right to collective bargaining

On 18 March 2022, P&O Ferries, owned by DP World, summarily sacked 800 staff with plans to replace them with cheaper agency workers paid below the minimum wage. This decision came as a shock, as there were no prior consultations with the unions and no prior notice to the workers. News of the mass dismissals was given by the management via a Zoom communication, leaving astounded crews to be forcibly removed from ships by hired security guards.

Unions and politicians alike denounced this scandal, and rallies and solidarity campaigns have been organised all over the United Kingdom and in many other countries.

Right to collective bargaining

In 2021, the Union of Construction and Services of Comisiones Obreras of Cádiz in Spain denounced the repeated breaches of the collective agreement committed by the company ITELYMP, the company in charge of cleaning the facilities of the University of Cádiz. The last breach concerned provisions on leave which the company had unilaterally reduced by two days. Despite the union’s request, the company did not modify its position.

Additionally, ITELYMP elaborated an equality plan without consulting the union representatives.

Right to collective bargaining

Commerce unions and workers in Poland took to the streets on 4 November 2021 to demand better trade union representation, decent pay, work-free Sundays and measures to address chronic understaffing and high workloads. Retail workers in Poland make up 14 per cent of the workforce, yet only three per cent are covered by a collective agreement. Low levels of collective bargaining in the commerce sector have led to poor wages and conditions, including inadequate occupational health and safety measures.

Affiliates of Poland’s national trade union centre, NSZZ Solidarnosc, reported serious violations of trade union rights in many retail companies, including dismissal of trade union leaders and members, discrimination against trade union representatives and members, marginalisation of the role of trade unions, disregard for trade union rights, limited and obstructed access to workers and a lack of genuine dialogue and consultation.

Much of the retail sector in the country is dominated by multinationals, but there is not a single collective agreement with the multinationals. The major retailers operating in Poland include Amazon, Auchan, Carrefour, Castorama, H&M, Jysk, Lidl and Metro.

Right to collective bargaining

In the Netherlands, employers frequently negotiated with yellow unions or the companies’ works council to adopt pay cuts. There is no legislation in the country ensuring that only independent trade unions are allowed to conclude collective agreements or that trade unions take precedence over works councils. As a result, where unions decide on a collective action in the context of a negotiation, employers can undermine unions’ position by simply concluding an agreement with yellow unions or works councils.

Right to collective bargaining

In the Netherlands, FNV has been trying for over fifteen years to reach a collective agreement in the meat processing industry, especially on access of union officials to the workplace. For decades, trade union officials who have attempted to hand out flyers on parking lots were met with intimidation and attacks by employers who even declared that they would only allow access of their premises to trade union officials when they are legally forced to do so. The meat sector has a high percentage of migrant workers who are particularly vulnerable to abuse and precarity.

Right to collective bargaining

On 8 February 2022, a strike in Lithuanian enterprise AB "Achema" was organised to protest the employer’s continued refusal to engage in collective bargaining. For several years the union had been trying to engage in a constructive dialogue with the company’s management and had taken all possible measures to reach a settlement. Unfortunately, the employer never engaged in social dialogue. Additional tensions emerged when the employer unilaterally adopted a new remuneration system.

Achema is a producer of nitrogen fertilizers and chemical products in Lithuania and the Baltic states. Currently, there is no collective bargaining within the company, and the state labour inspectorate is investigating possible violations of the workers’ rest and working-time arrangements.

Right to collective bargaining

Management at the biopharmaceutical company AbbVie in Carrigtwohill, Ireland, consistently refused to engage with representatives of the workers’ union, the Services Industrial Professional and Technical Union (SIPTU), for collective bargaining purposes.

This refusal persisted despite two recommendations by the Labour Court in 2017 and 2020 to engage with SIPTU representatives on behalf of their members “in relation to all matters associated with terms and conditions of employment including pay”.

SIPTU representatives wrote to management on a number of occasions in relation to its failure to fully implement the two Labour Court recommendations and engage in collective bargaining with the union. Management still refused to respond to or engage with their union either directly or indirectly.

Finally, at the beginning of August 2021, SIPTU members at the AbbVie plant commenced industrial action in the form of an overtime ban in the manufacturing process. Two weeks later no progress had been made, and the union announced they were considering escalating their action.

Right to collective bargaining

In Greece, violation of collective agreements were common, especially in the banking sector. Companies often refused to apply existing collective labour agreements. This behaviour was further compounded by the adoption of Law 4808/2021 of 19 June 2021, which provides that in case of challenge of a collective agreement before the courts, the collective agreement is suspended until a final court decision is issued. The law bears the risk of suspending the implementation of collective agreements for long periods of time, pending review by the judiciary, and thus depriving workers of the benefit of the negotiated provisions.

Right to collective bargaining

On 8 February 2021, the Finnish forest industry company United Paper Mills (UPM) suddenly announced it would no longer negotiate terms of employment. Instead, conditions would be determined without any collective agreement, meaning in practice that they would be unilaterally dictated by the employer.

This decision was preceded in October 2020 by an announcement by the forest industry employers' association, the Finnish Forest Industries Federation, that it would no longer participate in collective bargaining. National level collective agreements would end, and all collective agreements would be done at company level.

Appeals from the trade unions representing the workers, the Finnish Paper Workers’ Union Paperiliitto, the Finnish Industrial Union Teollisuusliitto, and Trade Union Pro, to negotiate a company level agreement with them were refused.

On 31 August 2021, UPM announced it would define the terms of work on the basis of “labour law, UPM practices and personal employment contracts”. According to a calculation UPM presented to their employees, pay would drop by one third from January 2022 onwards. Many benefits agreed in the collective agreement would also disappear.

Right to collective bargaining

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, a restructuring plan for seven coal mines owned by the state-owned Elektroprivreda BiH (EPBiH) power company, employing about 7,000 workers, was agreed between EPBiH and the unions in May 2021.

On 22 November 2021, however, the EPBiH imposed new working regulations that violated the collective bargaining agreement, slashing the miners' basic wage to 570 Bosnian marka (US$328) from 850 marka (US$489).

Thousands of miners halted work on 23 November and protested outside the seat of government in Sarajevo. They called for the minimum wage to be set at 1,000 Bosnian marka (US$575) while also demanding the payment of pension insurance, the resignation of the mines’ CEOs and the resignation of the head of EPBiH. Protests continued for a week until the government stepped in to mediate.

Right to collective bargaining

In June 2021, the president of the Union of State, Local Governments and Public Service Employees of Armenia addressed a letter to the mayor of Yerevan, offering to start negotiations on a sectoral collective agreement for the city employees, as provided by the labour code. However, this proposal was bluntly rejected by the city administration. Earlier in the year, the leader of the Yerevan City Hall workers’ union was unlawfully dismissed.

Right to collective bargaining

In Uruguay, medical staff unions the Sindicato Médico del Uruguay (SMU), the Federación Médica del Interior (FEMI) and the Sindicato Anestésico Quirúrgico (SAQ) requested a tripartite meeting with employers’ representatives (IAMAC) and the ministry of labour in April 2021 to demand the implementation of the collective agreement that had been concluded only five months before, in December 2020. IAMAC (private sector medical companies in Montevideo and the interior), had reneged on their commitment to pay salary supplements to medical workers. Despite the unions’ efforts, employers persistently refused to comply with their obligations under the collective agreement.

Right to collective bargaining

In 2021, AB InBev Peru implemented personnel restructuring processes without consulting the union organisations. In the restructuring process, the company dismissed three union general secretaries: Luis Samán, José Gayoso, and José Leiva as well as fifteen workers at the northern plant in Motupe, Peru, all of whom are members of the Backus National Union on strike.

Right to collective bargaining

Between April and May 2021, administrative health workers of the Tesai Foundation, a conglomerate of hospitals in the Itaipu region (Paraguay), went on strike for failure by the company to comply with the collective agreement. The workers, supported by their union, the Union of Civil Construction and Service Workers (Siconaps), were demanding the payment of benefits, the right to paid leave and maternity leave, the provision of safety equipment to all personnel, and medical and other guarantees provided for in the Collective Contract of Working Conditions in force. Tesai ignored the demands and continued to violate the agreement.

Right to collective bargaining

Failure to comply with collective agreements remained a common occurrence in Canada. For example, the Ontario Labour Relations Board received 355 unfair labour practice complaints, the principal charges against employers being “illegal discharge of or discrimination against employees for union activity, illegal changes in wages and working conditions and failure to bargain in good faith.”

Right to collective bargaining

In New Zealand, the H&M clothing chain suspended fourteen workers on 24 April 2021, during the negotiation of a new collective agreement on pay, in an anti-union move punishing them for trying to achieve the living wage. In 2019 already, unionised workers at H&M were locked out after wearing stickers in stores calling for fair pay.

Right to collective bargaining

In New Zealand, on 22 April 2021, NZ Bus notified Wellington bus drivers that they would be locked out from their jobs unless the drivers agreed to cut their pay and conditions of employment and accept an inferior employment agreement. The announcement of the lockout came after months of bitter negotiations over a new collective agreement. NZ Bus had refused an offer by the Wellington Regional Council to fund a living wage adjustment, because they wanted to reduce conditions of employment. This infringement of labour rights was strongly denounced by both the president of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions (NZCTU) and the transport minister, who urged the company to withdraw the notice.

Right to collective bargaining

On 28 May 2021, the Swire Coca-Cola Hong Kong Beverages Employees’ General Union (SCBEGU) launched strike action in response to severe wage cuts. Management had ignored the union and the collective bargaining process entirely to cut wages and to change its pay structure. The SCBEGU was among the very few private sector unions that has exercised collective bargaining rights for over decades.

Right to collective bargaining

In June 2021, the minister for local government announced that some councils were struggling financially. Her solution was to undermine the conditions agreed in their collective agreements and unilaterally impose fixed-term contracts on council workers with lesser salaries and benefits. The Fiji Trades Union Congress (FTUC) strongly denounced this unilateral move.

Right to collective bargaining

On 26 October 2021, the Australian stevedoring company Patrick Terminals applied to the Fair Work Commission (FWC) to terminate its existing enterprise agreement with the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA).

If successful, the stevedores would lose the pay and conditions they had negotiated for years and go back to minimum industry standards unless a new deal was negotiated within six months. Over 1,000 dock workers were covered by the agreement.

The MUA and Patrick had begun negotiations for a new agreement about two years earlier. The MUA agreed to forgo its original claim for annual six per cent pay increases over four years and accepted Patrick’s 2.5 per cent increases, well below the current consumer price index rise of 3.8 per cent. Patrick blamed the MUA for unreasonable demands, notably the request that they consult the union over a proportion of new hires. The MUA pointed out that similar agreements had been reached with other major port operators. On their side, the workers were opposed to Patrick’s use of casual labour, its current rostering regime and its recruitment plans.

Right to collective bargaining

By mid-October 2021 management at the Fremantle Container Terminal in Western Australia, owned by QUBE Holdings, was still refusing to re-enter negotiations with the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) over a lengthy dispute, despite being called on to do so by Western Australia premier Mark McGowan, several ministers and the Fair Work Commission.

Over 120 members of the MUA had been on strike since 30 July for an improved enterprise agreement. At the heart of the dispute was the roster system. QUBE workers were not on fixed rosters and were only told their schedule at 4 p.m. on the day before. The union asked that, as a minimum, shifts be allocated by 2 p.m. on the previous day, but management consistently refused and rejected all 42 of the union’s claims. QUBE further imposed a lockout and assigned its own management and supervisory staff to do stevedoring work to try and keep the terminal operating, despite serious safety concerns.

At the end of October, after the dispute had dragged on for eleven weeks, the MUA was forced to suspend industrial action, further to a threat from the federal Liberal-National government that it would ask the Fair Work Commission to terminate all industrial action at QUBE and impose compulsory arbitration.

Right to collective bargaining

On 9 December 2021, the president of Tunisia issued a circular (No. 20) to all ministries and government institutions that prohibits anyone from negotiating with the unions without the formal and prior authorisation of the head of government.

Right to collective bargaining

In 2021-2022, employers in Oman unilaterally changed the terms of the collective agreement or even stopped implementing its provisions for frivolous reasons.

Right to collective bargaining

In the past year, violations of the right to collective bargaining have increased in Morocco, including targeted dismissals of union representatives and employers’ refusal to engage in collective bargaining. These anti-union measures had a chilling effect on workers’ capacity to defend their rights collectively and negatively impacted collective bargaining, which, as a result, was virtually absent in most companies and sectors. Previous commitments between the government and representatives of trade union confederations have been suspended without implementation.

Right to collective bargaining

At Tel Aviv University, Israel, the management refused to hold negotiations with the Research and Project Workers Employees' Committee, despite it being recognised as representative. The committee had to seek remedy through the courts, which finally ruled in its favour in December 2021.

Right to collective bargaining

In September 2021, 2,000 workers from the Universal Group Co., an Egyptian manufacturer of home appliances, organised a protest, demanding the payment of their wages for July and August and other benefits that had been suspended for a long time. These workers represented five factories out of the nine in the group. The workers especially denounced management violation of the agreement signed in October 2019 with the Ministry of Manpower in which it committed to paying wages. At that time, the ministry had bailed the company and paid the 5,000 workers out of the emergency fund for a period of six months to encourage the company not to lay off workers, but the group proceeded to force the workers to resign.

Right to collective bargaining

In April 2021, the workers of the National Agency for Entrepreneurship Support and Development in Algeria launched a strike by a decision of the National General Assembly of the Trade Union of the Enterprise protesting the refusal of the management to engage in collective bargaining.

Right to collective bargaining

The National Union of Metal and Allied Industries of Zimbabwe (NUMAIZ) protested workers’ rights violations at Chinese-owned Afrochine Smelting and the total lack of compliance with the laws and existing collective agreements. In the past year, Afrochine failed to pay wages in due time and proceeded to unilaterally terminate 33 workers without prior consultation with the union. Conciliation efforts at the National Employment Council of the ferroalloy industry – a social dialogue platform – failed as Afrochine representatives did not show up at a meeting on 22 September 2021.

Workers at Afrochine live in fear, with no job security, and are being humiliated and beaten up by supervisors on a daily basis. Any attempt at reporting abuses is punished by immediate dismissal.

Afrochine is a subsidiary of the world’s biggest stainless steel product manufacturer, Tsingshan Holding Group, which trades on the London Metals Exchange. Over 1,500 workers are employed at the ferrochrome plant, which is about 75 kilometres from Harare.

Right to collective bargaining

On 21 April 2021, the South African Municipal Workers’ Union (SAMWU) appeared in court opposite Rand Water after the company tried to ban a protected strike called by the union. SAMWU decided to embark on an indefinite protected strike after the employer unilaterally changed the workers’ conditions of service, in particular withdrawing incentive bonuses that workers had been receiving for the last seventeen years. The union had tried several times to meet with the management of Rand Water to convince them to reconsider their decision but to no avail.

Right to collective bargaining

Around 11,000 local government workers in Nairobi, Kenya, went on strike on 13 October 2021 over the non-implementation of a collective bargaining agreement going back to 2013. The workers’ grievances, for years, included lack of promotions, repeated delays in salary payments and failure to remit statutory deductions. Another grievance was lack of personal protective equipment, and more recently at least 11,000 county workers had been without medical cover since July 2021.

After two days, the Kenya County Government Workers’ Union (KCGWU) was told its members could return to work. The union hoped promises regarding the workers’ key demands would be kept, but the government had agreed to workers’ demands before and repeatedly reneged on them.

Problems resurfaced at the beginning of February 2022, and workers gave City Hall 21 days to pay them more than KSh560 million in pending salaries and remit statutory deductions or they would take industrial action.

Right to establish and join a trade unionWorkers excluded from labour protections

41%

41% of countries excluded workers from the right to establish and join a trade union.

No change from 2021
76%

76% of countries excluded workers from the right to establish and join a trade union.

Compared with 72% in 2021
95%

95% of countries excluded workers from the right to establish and join a trade union.

Compared with 90% in 2021
100%

All 19 countries excluded workers from the right to establish and join a trade union.

No change from 2021
87%

87% of countries excluded workers from the right to establish and join a trade union.

No change from 2021

Workers excluded from labour protections

Under Turkish law, senior public employees, magistrates and prison guards were excluded from the right to organise.

Workers excluded from labour protections

In the Bahamas, prison staff were excluded from the legislation on the right to organise.

Workers excluded from labour protections

In 2021, there were major concerns about the widespread breach of workers’ rights in the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector in Jamaica, one of the fastest-growing industries in the Caribbean. Of the 40,000 BPO workers in Jamaica – whose roles varied from customer service to technical support, sales and more – nearly all were working on fixed-term and temporary contracts, and not one of the 70-plus companies operating on the island had allowed trade union representation within their firms.

Thousands of young workers were lured into call-centre jobs, enticed by promises of good salaries and skilled work within a high-tech, global industry, only to find themselves facing a completely different reality once the contracts were signed: long hours, short or no breaks during busy periods, and environments where employers hire and fire at will. While not explicit, the language in their contracts implied that organising and collective bargaining were grounds for dismissal.

Meanwhile, BPOs benefited from special privileges, as they operated under special economic zone (free zones) legislation as “public utility services”. This arrangement resulted in a range of tax exemptions and anti-union laws: for example, there can be no strikes unless unions give employers six weeks’ notice.

Workers excluded from labour protections

The Taboga sugar mill in the province of Guanacaste, Costa Rica's main sugar-cane-producing area, receives hundreds of people every year to work in the harvest, mainly migrants from neighbouring Nicaragua.

The local union SINTRAICA, affiliated to the IUF, has demanded that the company's management, the Ministry of Labour and the relevant authorities respect workers’ rights at Ingenio Taboga, an agro-industry company, and improve the terrible conditions in which the migrant workers work and live, including through compliance with the collective agreement on subcontracting and agency labour. Joining a union remained difficult for migrant workers in the industry.

Workers excluded from labour protections

In the garment sector, which represents an overwhelming share of Bangladesh’s export economy, over 500,000 workers employed in export processing zones (EPZs) were not allowed to form or join unions, which left them without real power to bargain for better working conditions. The situation worsened with the implementation of the 2019 Export Processing Zones Labour Act (ELA) which states that the workers can only be a part of a workers’ welfare association (WWA), where the workers may not be given the full scope of collective bargaining. It is strictly prohibited for the workers to organise any protest within the EPZ, and any protests are often met with violent retaliation from the EPZ authorities.

Workers excluded from labour protections

In Japan, the law still excluded firefighters and prison staff from the right to establish and join trade unions.

Workers excluded from labour protections

In 2021, Goundar Shipping, a major Fijian ferry company, sacked three Filipino seafarers after they said they wanted to take leave to speak to union representatives about their rights and how they could get home. They were among a group of more than 20 Filipino seafarers brought to Fiji to operate and maintain its fleet of passenger and cargo ferries. They were given promises of decent wages and conditions. When they arrived, the company informed the seafarers that they would be paid 60-70 per cent less than what they were promised.

With many of the seafarers unable to afford return tickets, they agreed to stay on with the company and were given fresh promises of repatriation following an additional year of work. The company then said that flights and quarantine costs were too expensive due to Covid and refused to honour its obligations to get the seafarers home. The seafarers had lodged official complaints with the Fijian authorities in September 2020, December 2020 and January 2021 to no avail.

Working in harsh conditions and isolated for months on ships, migrant seafarers are among the most vulnerable categories of workers and often do not have access to unions.

Workers excluded from labour protections

The legislation in Rwanda still prohibited political office holders and officers of the security services to establish and join trade unions.

Workers excluded from labour protections

In Morocco, certain categories of public employees were still denied the right to freedom of association, such as judges.

Workers excluded from labour protections

In the United Arab Emirates, foreign workers represented 89 per cent of the workforce. Under the kafala system, any attempt at escaping or fleeing an employer in the UAE is punishable by law. Runaway workers are imprisoned, deported, and face significant financial costs, including paying back their employers for the sponsorship fees without receiving salaries earned.

Horrendous reports of abuses have been exposed, like the case of a Nepali woman working as a domestic worker in a household in Dubai who was repeatedly sexually abused by her employer, his son and their relatives. Unable to escape, the 28-year-old tried to kill herself twice. She also tried to flee from the house, but to no avail. She then gave in to her employer’s demands, in the hope that it would help her escape. She managed to return home after two years of physical and mental exploitation.

Workers excluded from labour protections

In June 2021, 700 migrant workers from Africa were detained in the United Arab Emirates, denied access to legal or medical support. They were then deported. In 2021, migrant workers in the UAE were often denied timely payment of their wages and adequate overtime payments.

Workers excluded from labour protections

On 1 October 2021, the Dubai EXPO, a six-month international fair which welcomed 25 million visitors, opened in the United Arab Emirates. Despite the government’s promises, migrant workers across the country continued to suffer severe and frequent labour abuse. The almost eight million workers in the UAE remained at risk of suffering severe abuse facilitated by employment via the exploitative kafala system, with poor enforcement of regulation and with workers’ freedom to change employer curtailed. The most commonly reported types of abuse were conditions of employment (76 per cent); precarious and inadequate housing (56 per cent); arbitrary denial of freedoms (42 per cent); health and safety (39 per cent); verbal/physical abuse (13 per cent); human trafficking (5 per cent); deaths (5 per cent) and injuries (4 per cent).

Workers excluded from labour protections

Saudi Arabia went through a period of legislative change in the past years, and legal reforms came into force on 14 March 2021.

With the reforms, the ability of workers to transfer jobs has been facilitated, and employers' permission to leave the country is no longer required. Another important reform in Saudi Arabia was that of the labour courts, which have been automated to ensure speedy and effective justice and improve transparency.

For decades, restrictions on mobility have been used by employers to exploit and abuse migrant workers. Therefore, these developments were much awaited and constituted a big step for millions of migrant workers in the country.

However, the reform did not address all the long-standing issues, as it only applies to around 6.7 million migrant workers. 3.6 million domestic workers, farmers, shepherds, home guards, and private drivers remain excluded. In addition, the reform still contains restrictions whereby workers can only transfer sponsorship without the consent of the sponsor after completing one year of contract or upon the expiry of the work contract. Domestic workers face more restrictive conditions to change an employer within two years of the contract. Moreover, the reform did not lift all restrictions to exit and re-enter visas, especially for domestic workers.

Workers excluded from labour protections

Since 2017, Qatar has engaged in a set of important reforms to abolish the kafala 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). In addition, domestic workers are now given a standard employment contract and receive pay slips from their employers.

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, the reforms established labour courts to resolve complaints regarding the non-payment of wages, and a Workers’ Support and Insurance Fund was created.

At workplace level, committees of workers have been elected to address workers’ complaints while joint committees were established at sectoral level (including hospitality, construction, security, and transport).

Finally, Qatar has established a dispute settlement system accessible to migrant workers.

Workers excluded from labour protections

Palestinians’ access to work in Israel and the illegal settlements is tightly controlled through a repressive permit system, security checks and checkpoints. Only Palestinians with valid work permits can be “legally” employed by Israeli businesses. Out of the estimated 133,000 Palestinian workers in Israel and the illegal settlements, roughly 94,000 had a work permit. The overwhelming majority (99%) of permit holders are men, and most work in the construction sector.

Permits are issued for the duration of up to six months but can be arbitrarily annulled at any time by employers or Israel’s security services. Employers often used the threat of annulling permits to discipline workers who join unions, demand rights, or are involved in any form of political activity.

Right to establish and join a trade unionUnion-busting

41%

41% of countries excluded workers from the right to establish and join a trade union.

No change from 2021
76%

76% of countries excluded workers from the right to establish and join a trade union.

Compared with 72% in 2021
95%

95% of countries excluded workers from the right to establish and join a trade union.

Compared with 90% in 2021
100%

All 19 countries excluded workers from the right to establish and join a trade union.

No change from 2021
87%

87% of countries excluded workers from the right to establish and join a trade union.

No change from 2021

Union-busting

In June 2021, fifty-four workers of the ASD Laminat Factory in Düzce, Turkey, were dismissed as a result of their membership in the Turkish Wood and Paper Industry Workers’ Union (AGAC-IS). The company refused to recognise the union and resorted to union-busting schemes, such as arbitrarily dismissing unionists and pressuring other workers to renounce their union membership. After a four-year legal battle, a local court ruled in favour of the workers’ reinstatement earlier this year. However, the company continued to defy the court’s decision and intensified its anti-union practices. On 30 June, it started dismissing workers immediately after the pandemic “lay-off ban” was lifted. As of 14 July 2021, another 19 workers had been fired.

Union-busting

When workers at smartphone producer Salcomp in Istanbul, Turkey, exercised their fundamental right to join a trade union, they faced intimidation, threats and dismissals. Working conditions at the plant were untenable. During the pandemic, overtime was imposed without the workers’ consent and only partly paid. Breaks could only be taken at the managers’ discretion, and since there was no canteen, workers had to eat in containers for a while. Many workers became ill with COVID-19.

When the workers decided to join the Turkish Metalworkers’ Union (Türk Metal), in August 2021, management launched a union busting campaign. Workers were intimidated, threatened and 170 union members were dismissed. Around 80 per cent of the dismissed workers were women. After six days of protest, workers managed to get Salcomp to reverse its decision and reinstate all dismissed union members.

Salcomp produces smart phones for the Chinese multinational Xiaomi, the second largest smartphone maker in the world. There are around 800 workers at the site in Istanbul, and there are plans to increase the workforce to 2,000.

Union-busting

In November 2021, EasyJet gravely interfered in the union elections at its Barcelona (Spain) centre by dismissing the CC.OO. representative. This anti-union dismissal had no other motive but to thwart union growth in the company.

Union-busting

In the private sector in Greece, employers dismissed, transferred and downgraded unionised workers or used the threat of such measures against workers to discourage them from joining a union.

Union-busting

United Paper Mills (UPM) sacked the shop steward at its Kaukas sawmill (Finland) in April 2021. The company claimed it was a legal dismissal connected with closing one production line at the sawmill and with a “renewal of the management model”. Unions, on the other hand, saw the move as part of an attempt to undermine the trade unions, coming not long after the announcement that UPM was going to scrap the collective bargaining system.

Union-busting

In June 2021, two Turkish companies, Cengiz İnşaat and CI-AY Mühendislik, were hired to reconstruct a railway section in Croatia. From the beginning of the project, SGH, an affiliate of the Union of Autonomous Trade Unions of Croatia (SSSH) in the construction sector, contacted the management of the two companies to discuss the need to apply the sectoral collective agreement for all the workers working on the reconstruction project, including Turkish workers brought in for the project. The two companies obstinately refused any attempt by SGH to disseminate information to workers.

On 17 February 2022, SGH visited the workers on the construction site during their break and handed them leaflets on the rights under the collective agreement. Workers reported a series of violations of their rights, including working 250-300 hours a month and not being paid overtime. Immediately thereafter, seventeen workers received a text message informing them that they had been fired.

Union-busting

In Bulgaria, workers faced many obstacles to joining trade unions as employers terminated unionised workers, harassed trade union leaders, established yellow unions and refused to collect union dues, despite check-off agreements.

Union-busting

Following the restructuration in April 2021 of the social security administration in Armenia, which merged municipal services and three state administrations into one, all of which had their own union, the management of the newly created Unified Social Service (USS) decided to cease the application of the check-off agreements and the collection of union dues. This unilateral decision had a disastrous impact on the unions’ finances and their capacity to operate. Despite insistent requests from the presidents of the unions, the issue remained unresolved.

Union-busting

In 2021, Coca-Cola Uruguay imposed a restructuring to lay off sixteen workers in Montevideo and eighteen workers in the department of Salto. The company claimed that it would lay off those who had received a disciplinary sanction in the past. In reality, the company targeted only unionised workers in Salto.

The Coca-Cola Workers’ Union (STCC) tried to argue for their reinstatement during a 45-day negotiation, without reaching an agreement with Coca Cola. On 4 August 2021, the STCC unanimously resolved to go on strike for seven days.

Union-busting

During the pandemic, the Luxottica management at the manufacturing and distribution centre in McDonough, USA, used a company-issued app called “LiveSafe”, allegedly to inform workers on COVID-19 issues in the workplace. In reality, the app served as a platform for management to send anti-union messages about purported “risks” of union organising, including that workers might lose pay and benefits if they succeeded in forming a union. In addition to the app, management created an anti-union website vilifying unions and suggesting dire consequences if workers signed a union card. The company also hired anti-union consultants and required workers to attend mandatory, union-bashing “captive-audience” meetings with no opportunity for response by union supporters.

On 15 July 2021, national and international labour groups filed a complaint under the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, alleging severe violations of workers’ freedom of association rights at the Luxottica USA.

The Luxottica manufacturing and distribution centre in Georgia employs 2,000 workers. Luxottica is a division of the EssilorLuxottica group, the world’s largest provider of vision care and eyewear products, serving a global market with over 150,000 employees around the world.

Union-busting

During 2021, Heinz-Glas Peru continued with its anti-union policy to disband the union and prevent collective bargaining. The company offered help for the disaffiliation of members, even going to their homes, sending them the letter of disaffiliation, calling them one by one to encourage their disaffiliation and offering a position with a higher income to those who would choose to disaffiliate.

Union-busting

At the end of April 2021, AB InBev La Constancia, in El Salvador, one of the world's largest brewers, unjustly dismissed 32 workers, all members of the IUF-affiliated Constancia Workers' Union (SITRACONSTA). On 30 July 2021, the company fired 30 more unionised workers. The union requested the immediate reinstatement of the unjustly dismissed union members, recognition of the union and the commencement of collective bargaining. The company consistently refused to give way to bargaining, arguing that it did not have time because of its restructuring plans and pandemic coping measures.

Throughout 2021, La Constancia has maintained its anti-union policy of intimidating union members by telling them that layoffs are SITRACONSTA's responsibility and offering job security to workers who prove that they have resigned from the union.

Union-busting

In 2021, Hyundai helped set up a car manufacturing plant in southwest Korea so that it could produce cars cheaply and, crucially, without unions. The new car plant, opening in late 2021, is operated by Gwangju Global Motors (GGM), a newly established company founded by the city of Gwangju, which has a majority share of 21 per cent, while Hyundai has a 19 per cent stake. The aim was primarily to avoid unionised labour. Most of the workers at Hyundai itself are unionised and have successfully taken industrial action to achieve higher wages. Average annual pay at Hyundai is 88 million won. At the new plant, dubbed the "half-wage factory", the average annual pay is 35 million won, which is below the national average of 42.34 million won for company employees.

Union-busting

In May 2021, management at the Fairmont Sanur hotel in Bali, Indonesia, part of the Accor chain, individually contacted workers who had been dismissed in July 2020 to offer them their jobs back, but only on condition that they denied their union membership.

In April 2020 the workers had agreed to a massive 70 per cent pay cut to keep the hotel going during the pandemic. Despite this, management still tried to force 68 workers to sign “voluntary” resignation letters at the end of July 2020. All of them were members of the recently formed Serikat Pekerja Mandiri (SPM) union. The workers refused and two days later received termination letters declaring them redundant.

The letter the workers had to sign to get their jobs back stated: “It is true that I work as a Fairmont Hotel employee, hereby declare voluntarily and knowingly without any coercion from any party that I have never joined the membership of Serikat Pekerja Mandiri (SPM). Thus, I made this statement letter in truth.”

Of the workers contacted, only four agreed to sign, while 38 continued to fight for reinstatement on the grounds of unfair dismissal.

Union-busting

In August 2021, the Kerala Bank Thiruvananthapuram district branch in India brought in new by-laws limiting the union activities of its staff. Under the new rules the unions may not intervene in any decisions relating to transfers. Shortly after that announcement, two women leaders of the Bank Employees Federation of India (BEFI) were transferred outside their district. Both women were members of the BEFI women’s subcommittee, and both worked in the same unit. They were transferred to two different places, with immediate effect. According to BEFI, they were transferred for taking union leave to take part in the union’s General Council convention.

Union-busting

The NagaWorld Hotel and Casino complex in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, has consistently denied their workers the right to union representation. For more than two decades, management has refused to fully recognise the Union of Khmer Employees of Naga World (LRSU).

Union-busting

On 24 September 2021, a meeting was planned to take place in the Bangladesh Independent Garment Workers Union Federation (BIGUF) office in Chattogram to form a regional committee of the IndustriALL Bangladesh Council (IBC). However, a phone call from the police to IBC’s senior vice president Salauddin Shapon put a stop to it. Another meeting was planned to be held in a different area the following day. But again, the police contacted the vice president to say the meeting could not take place there either.

In a third attempt, the IBC decided to hold the meeting at the office of another affiliate, the Bangladesh Textile and Garment Workers League (BTGWL). When IBC leaders arrived, police officers, including some in plain clothes, blocked the gate and did not allow anyone to enter.

Union-busting

In South Africa, about 100 workers at Rhodes University began a strike on 10 August 2021 after the institution failed to recognise their union, the National Union of Public Service and Allied Workers (NUPSAW). Having unionised over ten per cent of the university workers, NUPSAW had approached the university on 29 April 2021 seeking recognition, including the right to organise and recruit members and hold meetings on campus.

When asked why the university would not recognise the union, its senior communications officer said, in blatant violation of South African laws, that NUPSAW was not sufficiently representative.

Union-busting

In June 2021, the Société des Brasseries du Mali (BRAMALI) proceeded to targeted dismissals of the company union officials, including the union deputy general secretary, the communication secretary and the finance secretary. Several other union officials were on the waiting list to be dismissed and given eight days' notice. The firings came amidst a union struggle at BRAMALI after a three-day strike in May 2021.

Union-busting

Workers at Style Industries Ltd, a manufacturer of synthetic hair, have been fighting since 2015 to have their union, the Kenyan Union of Hair and Beauty Workers (KUHABWO), recognised. KUHABWO recruited 3,811 workers out of a workforce of 6,000, of whom 85 per cent are women, but the company did all it could to harass and discourage union members. When union officials came to recruit workers during breaks or lunch time, the employer used the police to harass and arrest the workers to stop them from speaking with union representatives.

The dispute became deadlocked at conciliation, and the case went to the Employment and Labour Relations Court, which issued a restraining order against the company in 2017. The order instructed Style Industries to stop “victimising, intimidating, coercing, harassing, and indulging in unfair labour practices” and allow for the case to be finalised in court. Further, the court said the company must stop terminating contracts and dismissing union members because of their union membership.

Despite the court’ decision, the company’s union-busting tactics continued, and in May 2021 it dismissed another 150 union members. Those who were not deterred by the move and remained union members were threatened with dismissals.

A solidarity campaign was launched in June 2021 to raise awareness of the company’s anti-union tactics.

Union-busting

Since October 2020, Amadou Diallo and Alhassane Diallo, respectively secretary general and deputy secretary general of the Sheraton Grand Conakry workers' union, have been seeking reinstatement after their anti-union dismissal. Despite international solidarity campaigns and a complaint to the ILO, the management of the hotel has stubbornly opposed their reinstatement.

Workers of the Sheraton Grand Conakry, which is the largest hotel in Guinea, began organising in March 2019 in response to low wages, unpaid overtime and an absence of healthcare provisions. The lengthy unionisation process ended with the successful union election on 11 February 2020. Throughout this time, hotel management tried all possible means to stop the election, and in a blatant union-bashing move, resorted to unfairly dismissing the two union leaders.

Union-busting

In April 2021, a waste-sorting plant for the city of Jerusalem operating in the Atarot settlement industrial zone undermined workers’ rights. Some 110 of its Palestinian workers joined Maan Union to fight against exploitative working conditions. Employers used financial constraints imposed by COVID-19 to weaken workers’ unionising efforts. Dozens of workers were forced to take leave of absence without pay, others were to stay on the factory grounds without appropriate arrangements if they were to keep their jobs, and nine workers were fired, including union leaders.

Union-busting

In 2021, a number of workers who tried to form trade unions in Oman were subjected to arbitrary decisions by their employers to prevent and obstruct them from forming trade unions; these decisions included dismissals and transfers to remote locations.

Union-busting

On 11 July 2021, the Ministry of Electricity in Iraq issued a directive banning trade union committees and instructing employees in public-owned companies not to engage in such committees under penalty of criminal prosecution. In addition, the Iraqi Ministry of Industry and Minerals issued disciplinary warnings against two union leaders in retaliation for their unionising efforts.

Union-busting

While shortly before, in June 2021, elections for employee delegates were held throughout the country, union members of the Webhelp and Sitel Group call centres in Morocco were unfairly dismissed. At Sitel, employees who had created a union office with the Union Marocaine des Travailleurs (UMT) were dismissed or suspended without pay. At Webhelp, employees attempting to form unions at various worksites faced intimidation and pressure from management.

Right to trade union activities

59%74%

The number of countries which impeded the registration of unions increased from 59% of countries in 2014 to 74% of countries in 2022.

38%

38% of countries impeded the registration of unions.

88%

88% of countries impeded the registration of unions.

No change from 2021
79%

79% of countries impeded the registration of unions.

No change from 2021
100%

All 19 countries impeded the registration of unions.

No change from 2021
91%

91% of countries impeded the registration of unions.

No change from 2021

Right to trade union activities

On 2 November 2021, persons claiming to be members of the Quezon City Police Department went to the national office of Sentro ng mga Nagkakaisa at Progresibong Manggagawa (SENTRO) in Manila to supposedly investigate a labour dispute involving its affiliate, the Federation and Cooperation of Cola, Beverage, and Allied Industry Unions (FCCU). The FCCU is engaged in a labour dispute at Coca-Cola Philippines over deadlocked wage bargaining and a national campaign for the reinstatement of unfairly terminated union leaders.

The individuals had no legal documents officially identifying and authorising them or stating the purpose of their visit. They repeatedly asked for information regarding SENTRO’s office, the other unions present there, and their activities. The so-called police officers also went to the premises of the Trade Union Confederation of the Philippines (TUCP) compound in Quezon City. They inquired about the NAGKAISA Labour Coalition, of which SENTRO is a part.

Right to trade union activities

On 11 May 2021, the Alexandria Spinning and Weaving Company refused to allow Ashraf Nassef, head of the workers’ trade union committee, and Faraj Al-Najjar, the union’s treasurer, to enter the company to speak to their members. This followed an incident on 4 March 2021 when management transferred seven members of the company’s union committee from their technical jobs to administrative security because of their union activities. The seven trade union members were Faraj Saeed, vice chairman of the trade union committee; Mahmoud Ibrahim El-Gohari, treasurer of the trade union committee; Mohamed Al-Masry, board member; Mohamed Mohamed Ibrahim, assistant treasurer; Mohamed Youssef, board member; Magdy Marei, board member; and Tariq Bakr, board member.

Right to trade union activities

Kazakh authorities have long been impeding the operation of independent trade unions in the country by simply de-registering and refusing to reregister unions. In January 2021, the authorities de-registered the branch of the Sectoral Fuel and Energy Workers’ Union (SFEWU) in the Kyzylordy region, founding the decision on an alleged de-registration request made by an ex-chairman.

This unlawful de-registration decision had repercussions for the SFEWU itself, as according to the law, a sectoral trade union must have at least nine registered branch unions. In February 2021, the Specialised Inter-District Economic Court of Shymkent suspended the SFEWU’s activities for six months. The decision was upheld by the appellate court and entered into force on 29 April 2021. All activities of the SFEWU had to stop immediately because of the threat of criminal prosecution of the leaders under Article 430 of the Criminal Code.

Right to trade union activities

In North Macedonia, discrimination against the Konfederacija Slobodnik Sindikata (KSS) by state officials and public institutions continued as KSS's request for representativeness, submitted in July 2019, was still pending before the authorities without any official motive. De facto, KSS’s request was rejected, and therefore the union was denied full involvement in national social dialogue, prevented from participating in the process of economic and social policy building, and denied the possibility of representing the interests and promoting the rights of its members.

Right to trade union activities

On 22 July 2021, the Belarusian Ministry of Justice filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court to liquidate the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ). BAJ has been accused by the government of violating the legislation on national workers’ associations. The application for dissolution of the BAJ was approved by the Supreme Court on 27 August 2021. BAJ was the only independent representative organisation of journalists and media workers in Belarus and one of the country’s most prominent champions of freedom of expression.

Right to trade union activities

On 14 December 2019, all trade unions and professional associations in Sudan were dissolved by a decree of the Sovereignty Council, which also seized all unions’ properties and assets. Since then and especially after the military coup in October 2021, independent unions have been unable to operate in the country.

Right to trade union activities

Since 2021, the Hong Kong authorities have increased pressure on independent unions to either fall in line or disband, while the Registrar of Trade Unions has methodically summoned independent trade unions on frivolous motives and has opened de-registration proceedings.

The Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU) announced in September 2021 that it was preparing to disband after 31 years of leading the democratic trade union movement in the region. In the month’s leading up to the decision, the HKCTU and its member organisations had faced unprecedented attacks, intimidation and allegations of offences under the 2020 National Security Law. The personal safety of union leaders had also been threatened. On 3 October 2021, members backed a resolution to cease operations by a vote of 57 to eight, with two abstentions, at an extraordinary general meeting.

In 2022, the Hong Kong independent trade union movement and pro-democracy movement were all but silenced as many unions were forced to disband or arbitrarily deregistered, including the General Union of Hong Kong Speech Therapists (GUHKST); the Hospital Authority Employees’ Alliance (HAEA); the Hong Kong Professional Teachers’ Union (HKPTU); the Union of New Civil Servants (UNCS); Medicine Inspires; the Hong Kong Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Union; Hong Kong Educators’ Alliance; the Frontline Doctors’ Union; the Hong Kong Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Union; the Financial Technology Professional Services Personnel Union; and the Hong Kong Teaching and Research Support Staff Union and Next Media Trade Union (NMTU).

Right to trade union activities

After the 1 February coup in Myanmar, the Tatmadaw, the Burmese military, declared sixteen labour organisations illegal on 2 March 2021. All industrial zones in Yangon were placed under martial law, making it very difficult for workers to organise. Union leaders then reported a mass exodus of factory workers from the industrial zones to their hometown rural villages. The military asked factory owners to disclose the names and addresses of trade union leaders to arrest them, and soldiers were sent door to door in the worker dormitories and hostels in a bid to find them. The houses of union leaders were raided and money and other private property were confiscated.

Right to trade union activities

In 2022, the Cambodian authorities continued to prevent union registration for arbitrary reasons or for extremely minor technical errors. In one case, a union submitted its application to the Ministry of Labour on 25 December 2020 and included all ten types of documents required by law. In February 2021, local union leaders were called by the ministry for the first time to correct spelling mistakes on the cover letter and in the profile of union leaders. Over two months later, on 7 May 2021, local union leaders were called a second time to correct the size of the photos of the union leaders from (3x4) to (4x6) and resubmit them once again. As of 2022, the union was still not registered, after having expended considerable time and resources to submit the application.

Right to trade union activities

The Taliban took over Afghanistan in August 2021, and the country plunged immediately into instability and poverty. It is estimated that 90 per cent of the working population lost their jobs. One of the first measures taken by the Taliban regime was to curtail women’s rights, including access to employment and education.

As the Taliban started cracking down on democratic voices and organisations, killing activists and raiding their houses, the leadership of the National Union of Afghanistan Workers and Employees (NUAWE) were forced to go into exile and found refuge in France with the support of the ITUC, the Confédération française démocratique du travail (CFDT) and the French government. Carrying out trade union activities has become extremely dangerous for trade unionists remaining in the country, as they are under constant surveillance and face threats to their lives.

Right to trade union activities

On 31 December 2020, the Jordanian authorities had proceeded to the arbitrary dissolution of the Jordanian Teachers’ Association (JTA). While the administrative decision was finally reversed on 31 October 2021 by the Amman Court of Appeal, JTA was still impeded from operating and representing teachers in the country, as none of the JTA board members were able to resume their trade union activities.

Right to trade union activities

Since 2020, all independent unions in Iraq are unable to operate. On 12 October 2020, the Iraqi Ministry of Labour published letter No. 11367 imposing a trade union monopoly in Iraq and instructing government administrative bodies not to deal with any union other than the officially recognised General Federation of Iraqi Workers.

Right to trade union activities

In Egypt, all independent unions were dissolved in March 2018. Since then, many have faced countless administrative hurdles and in 2022 were still seeking official registration with the authorities. Where a yellow union already existed in the workplace, unions encountered further difficulties, with employers claiming that under the 2017 law, only one trade union committee can be established, thus preventing the formation of a new union.

Right to strikeProsecution of union leaders for participating in strikes

72%

72% of countries violated the right to strike.

Compared with 73% in 2021
92%

92% of countries violated the right to strike.

Compared with 88% in 2021
95%

95% of countries violated the right to strike.

No change from 2021
95%

95% of countries violated the right to strike.

Compared with 94% in 2021
87%

87% of countries violated the right to strike.

No change from 2021
63%87%

Countries violating the right to strike have increased from 63% of countries in 2014 to 87% of countries in 2022.

Prosecution of union leaders for participating in strikes

On 8 October 2021, the workers at General Motors' Chevrolet in São Caetano do Sul plant in Brazil were on strike after negotiations with the employer on wage adjustments broke down. After the union decided to launch the strike, a conciliation hearing was held at the Regional Labour Court. However, no agreement was reached between the parties. On 21 October, the Regional Labour Court declared the strike illegal. The trade union assembly decided to continue with the action. However, because of possible legal actions against the strikers, the workers had to reincorporate to work with no solution to their demands.

Prosecution of union leaders for participating in strikes

In Belgium, article 406 of the penal code allows for prosecution and sentencing for “malicious obstruction of traffic” in the context of a strike movement. This provision, which has already been applied twice in the last two years to condemn seventeen FGTB members to suspended prison sentences and heavy fines, severely hampers possibilities to organise strikes in the country.

While an appeal has been lodged by Belgian trade unions to reverse the sentences, in 2022 another trade unionist was prosecuted under the same provision for a picket line organised in 2016 at the Lantin prison facility. A criminal complaint was filed by the municipality against CGSP members for littering, alleging damages to the tarmac where a brazier was lit. While the public prosecutor requested a dismissal of the case, it was still pending at the time of writing.

Prosecution of union leaders for participating in strikes

On 8 June 2021, the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, signed new legislation that punishes those accused of participating in unauthorised demonstrations with imprisonment of up to three years. Those who are found to have participated in or promoted "extremist activity" face up to six years in jail. The definition of “extremist activity” is not clearly defined in the new legislation, and there is fear that the new provisions will be used to suppress any dissent. This new law follows laws enacted on 24 May 2021 making it compulsory to obtain a permit from the authorities to organise mass events.

Prosecution of union leaders for participating in strikes

In 2022, Sawit Kaewvarn, president of the State Railway Union of Thailand (SRUT), and twelve other national and local union leaders remained wrongfully imprisoned. The SRUT workers had been ruthlessly pursued by the State Railway of Thailand through the legal system for carrying out a national rail safety campaign following a fatal train derailment in October 2009 at Khao Tao Station. The Thai authorities pursued a vendetta against the workers. Since November 2018, the monthly salaries of seven SRUT leaders have been deducted to pay fines of 24 million baht (US$726,116) to SRT based on the decision of the Supreme Labour Court in 2017. The thirteen trade unionists were currently serving a three-year prison sentence.

Prosecution of union leaders for participating in strikes

Forty-four employees of a pasta-making company in the Philippines, Soft Touch Development Corp., were arrested on 15 December 2021 for going on strike. They were charged with illegal assembly, disobedience to a person in authority and “alarm and scandal”. They were released from jail after 36 hours, pending further investigation. The firm maintained that the employees were prohibited from forming a trade union because their employer was the manpower agency that hired them. The strike was called after workers learned they would be laid off on 24 December. It was brutally repressed by the police, who used water cannons and truncheons on the strikers, dragging them into a police van.

Prosecution of union leaders for participating in strikes

Around 150 unemployed teachers were detained while over a dozen received minor injuries as police baton-charged them twice during a protest near Punjab’s chief minister’s residence in Patiala, India, on 8 June 2021, in a repeat of incidents earlier in the year.

Despite multiple assurances, the government had failed to provide them jobs in government schools. The five unions involved were frustrated at delays in meeting with the government officials and dealing with their demands. The teachers clashed with police as they were marching towards the chief minister’s residence. Those detained were later released without charge.

Prosecution of union leaders for participating in strikes

Clashes erupted between police and workers who came out to demonstrate on 26 October 2021 in at least three parts of Ecuador as part of the national strike against the government. In Imbabura, in the canton of Peguche, security forces threw tear gas to disperse the citizens. The demonstrations were called by the United Workers' Front (FUT), the Popular Front (FP) and the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (Conaie). Among the demands were a freeze on fuel prices and support for the draft labour code recently presented to the legislature by the FUT, and rejection of the proposed Law for the Creation of Opportunities. At least 37 demonstrators were arrested throughout the country.

Prosecution of union leaders for participating in strikes

At the end of 2020, workers at the Ash Grove cement plant in Joliette, Quebec (Canada), were informed that two of the four kilns would be closed, putting at least half of their jobs at risk. Despite the fact that collective bargaining was still ongoing, members of the workplace union Unifor were illegally locked out of the plant on 22 May 2021. Unifor, along with the Quebec Federation of Labor and their members across Quebec, organised a series of solidarity actions.

In response to the union mobilisation, Ash Grove management obtained a new injunction limiting union actions. The employer also filed a CA$2.6 million (about US$2.1 million) management grievance for lost production and equipment breakdown and dismissed two members of Local 177, including a member of the bargaining committee.

Ash Grove cement is owned by CRH Canada, which employs 4,000 people in 100 production facilities. Worldwide, the global giant employs more than 76,000 people in over 3,000 locations in 29 countries.

Prosecution of union leaders for participating in strikes

On 5 October 2021, on the occasion of the World Teachers’ Day Celebrations, the Jordanian security forces arrested and detained fourteen leading members of the Jordanian Teachers’ Association (JTA). Riot police were deployed to stop peacefully demonstrating teachers denouncing the crackdown on trade union rights. The fourteen members were: Ahmad Ali Ahmad Alzaboun, head of the JTA; Nasser Nawasra, vice president of the JTA; and the following members of the JTA Council: Ghaleb Mansour Abu Qudia; Nidal Awwad Al Hisa; Kifah Suleiman Abu Farhan; Feras Awad Shteiwi Al Sarhan; Basil Mahmoud Al Houroub; Sulaiman Farhan Jaber Al Hayyer; Ibrahim Shaker Khalaf Assaf; Adbassalam assan Moussa Ayasra; Mustapha Annabeh; Iyad Albustanji; Moatassem Abdelrahman Beshtawy; and Noureddin Yusuf.

Prosecution of union leaders for participating in strikes

In August 2021, employees at Pelephone and Bezeq International, two Israeli telecommunications companies, organised a strike near the controlling shareholder's house. They were forcibly expelled by the police, who also arrested several striking workers.

Prosecution of union leaders for participating in strikes

On 28 September 2021, Egyptian security forces cracked down on a peaceful strike at Universal for Electrical Appliances. Ten days before, about 2,000 workers had begun a sit-in at the company’s headquarters following the death of a colleague from a heart attack after working overtime because of financial pressure. The workers had not been paid for two months.

On 28 September, security forces surrounded the sit-in, closed the gates, and prevented workers from going out even to buy food. Hours earlier, security forces raided the houses of three workers: Saeed Abdel Qader, Said Mohamed Abdel Latif and Mahmoud Ahmed Haridy, who was recovering at home after having fallen into a diabetic coma. The three were taken into custody. Haridy’s daughter followed her father to the Warraq police station and inquired after her him, but officers who were at her home less than an hour earlier denied knowledge of the incident. A non-commissioned officer advised her to go to the Imbaba police station, where she was told that her father had been taken to the headquarters of the National Security Agency, a special police force, notorious for human rights violations, involved in policing so-called “national security threats”, including independent labour movements.

Prosecution of union leaders for participating in strikes

On 14 February 2022, people in the Karma Bani Saeed district, Iraq, demonstrated in front of the governorate building, demanding the provision of health services. Police forces dispersed the protest, using excessive force and leaving several demonstrators with severe injuries. The negotiating delegation was arrested, including trade unionist Muhannad Al-Saeedi, a member of the Dhi Qar Oil Company workers union and a member of the General Union of Oil and Gas Workers in Iraq of the General Federation of Trade Unions.

Prosecution of union leaders for participating in strikes

In May 2021, Algerian firefighters went on strike to demand an increase in their wages and an improvement in their working conditions. The Ministry of Interior announced the suspension of 230 firefighters and their immediate prosecution, considering their protests "a betrayal of the duties and responsibilities entrusted to them".

Prosecution of union leaders for participating in strikes

In November 2021, nearly 100 teachers were arrested in Sudan as two days of civil disobedience and strikes in protest at the military coup began. Security forces used tear gas against workers protesting outside the education ministry building for Khartoum state. Many were beaten and at least one, a head teacher, had her leg broken.

Eighty-seven teachers were arrested and taken to the military headquarters after prosecutors refused to release them on bail.

In Neyala, the capital of South Darfur, unknown men in plain clothes raided teachers’ houses and arrested another five teachers, including Gamal Margan, who is in charge of the education of the shepherds. On 8 November 2021, military forces also stormed the Secondary Education Department in Karray in order to install a new, pro-military management.

Right to strikeDismissals for participating in strike action

72%

72% of countries violated the right to strike.

Compared with 73% in 2021
92%

92% of countries violated the right to strike.

Compared with 88% in 2021
95%

95% of countries violated the right to strike.

No change from 2021
95%

95% of countries violated the right to strike.

Compared with 94% in 2021
87%

87% of countries violated the right to strike.

No change from 2021
63%87%

Countries violating the right to strike have increased from 63% of countries in 2014 to 87% of countries in 2022.

Dismissals for participating in strike action

Fiat Plastik in Serbia attempted to break a strike by its workers in the Serbian city of Kragujevac by placing the strike committee on paid leave in May 2021 and transferring some of the production away from the Kragujevac facility. Thirteen workers who took part in the stoppages, including the entire strike committee, were illegally placed on leave, and the committee locked out of the plant. Management also removed machinery from the plant.

Protests had begun in January 2021 with one-hour-per-day stoppages further to the announcement of a €300 annual pay cut.

In June 2021, management were charged with misdemeanours by the labour inspectorate over attempts to break the strike.

In August, the United Trade Unions of Serbia denounced intimidation by the Security and Information Agency of Serbia (BIA). BIA called the president of the strike committee on 11 August to invite him to a “conversation”. The Fiat Plastik union refused, announcing that it was “not interested in politics”, only with trade union matters.

The dispute continued. Negotiations with Fiat, mediated by the state Agency for the Peaceful Settlement of Labor Disputes, failed in October. At the time of writing, the dispute had not yet been resolved.

Dismissals for participating in strike action

When workers at the Upfield food company in Portugal announced a series of two-hour strikes, the company responded with a collective dismissal. The strike was called when Upfield ignored the workers’ demands for a €30 increase in their monthly pay. The strikes began on 5 July 2021.

In the days following the publication of the strike notice, the company announced its intention to make 19 workers redundant, including a member of the workers' committee and the three workplace health and safety representatives.

The workers held a meeting and scheduled an action in defence of their rights for the 15 July. On 19 July they scheduled a 24-hour strike to protest against the collective dismissal and press for pay rises and the upgrading of careers.

Upfield's relations with workers' representatives had steadily deteriorated since the company was taken over from Unilever-Jerónimo Martins Lda. by a North American financial group (KKR) three years earlier.

Dismissals for participating in strike action

In Georgia, cleaning and waste management company Tbilservice Group fired Irakli Baghdavadze for organising a strike on 6 August 2021. Fellow workers joined him to demand a pay rise, new uniforms and free health insurance. The strike ended on 9 August after Tbilisi City Hall promised a pay rise from 2022, but Irakli lost his job over the protest.

Dismissals for participating in strike action

On 22 May 2021, Kurum International in Albania dismissed 20 mechanics and electricians at the Ulëz and Shkopet hydroelectric plants in violation of their collective agreement signed in 2019 with the Trade Union Federation of Industrial Workers of Albania (FSPISH).

The workers staged daily protests and pickets, and trade union activists travelled from across Albania to join them. The company responded by harassing the union committee and suspending those who took part in strike action.

The hydroelectric plants are among four acquired by Turkish-based Kurum Holdings from the Albanian government in a privatisation deal in 2013. Since buying the power plants, Kurum has reduced the workforce by 120, leaving only 43 workers. The power plants are the only major source of employment in the region.

Dismissals for participating in strike action

In April 2021, the Korea Democratic Pharmaceutical Union (KDPU) announced that a lawsuit was being filed against Zuellig Pharma Specialty Solutions Korea for unfair dismissal.

The company had announced that it would implement an early retirement programme to lay off staff after some financial losses. It soon emerged that the staff members concerned were all members of the company workers’ union who had gone on strike on 30 October 2020 over a pay dispute.

Dismissals for participating in strike action

Around 1,400 striking workers of the National Health Mission (NHM) in India, including staff nurses, medical officers, homeopathy Ayurveda doctors and ministerial staff, were sacked by the Punjab government on 10 May 2021 for refusing to end their week-long strike. About 3,000 NHM workers walked out on strike to demand higher wages and permanent jobs. The sacked workers, who were fired through the Disaster Management Act, were from seven districts in Punjab.

Dismissals for participating in strike action

In early 2022, Centri Group S.A. in Haiti dismissed some 60 workers for protesting at unfair wage practices in the garment sector. In January 2022, a coalition of unions had called on the prime minister to increase the minimum wage in the garment industry from 500 gourdes a day (US$4.80) to 1,500 gourdes. The protests were brutally repressed by the police, who fired tear gas and beat protestors with batons outside the SONAPI free trade zone in Port-au-Prince.

In recent months, inflation in Haiti has reached 23 per cent. In the garment sector, wages have stayed the same for the past three years, and workers earn less than a third of what they need to in order to survive.

Dismissals for participating in strike action

In Canada, the governments, federal and provincial, frequently used back-to-work legislation to end strikes. For instance, the federal government passed back-to-work legislation to end a strike by dock workers, represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), at the Port of Montreal on 30 April 2021. The union had been unable to secure a new collective bargaining agreement after nearly three years of negotiations. The union called the strike after the employer, the Maritime Employers’ Association, notified the union it would no longer honour collective agreement provisions related to job security and began unilaterally imposing overtime at the port.

Similarly, in early November 2021, the government of New Brunswick used back-to-work legislation against striking public sector workers. Approximately 22,000 CUPE members across a range of public services were on strike in the province. The government used emergency legislation to force members of three striking health care bargaining units (CUPE 1251, CUPE 1252 and CUPE 1190) back to work. The federal government and the government of New Brunswick’s uses of back-to-work legislation infringe on workers’ right to strike, protected under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Dismissals for participating in strike action

In Edmonton, Canada, members of Boilermakers Lodge 146 have been locked out by their employer, CESSCO Fabrication and Engineering Ltd., a steal company, since June 2020. Over the past year, the employer has hired replacement workers while receiving the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy, a pandemic benefit paid by the federal government to employers, ostensibly to cover payroll expenses. The continued use of replacement workers has prolonged the lockout. Before the lockout, the union had been bargaining for a contract for over two and a half years.

Dismissals for participating in strike action

In Iran, 700 workers at a Tehran Oil Refining Company were fired on 22 June 2021 for participating in workplace strikes, which were part of a sweeping strike action occurring across Iran in which an estimated 20,000 oil and petrochemical workers took part across 11 provinces. Many workers from various industrial centres had joined the “1400 Campaign”, demanding higher wages, an increase in leave and holidays, and better health and safety conditions. These were longstanding demands that have so far been ignored by management and the Iranian regime’s authorities.

Dismissals for participating in strike action

On 2 August 2021, Egyptian razor manufacturer Lord International Co. terminated 38 workers who took part in a strike involving 2,000 workers at the company that began in late July 2021 and brought production in two out of the company’s three factories to a halt. In a statement, the company also said that it had referred some of the striking workers for internal investigation.

The striking workers were calling for a minimum profit share rate and for their annually renewable contracts to be changed to permanent ones. They also demanded that management guarantee protesting workers would not face disciplinary action or dismissal. Instead, the company announced that workers who had been identified as the “instigators of the strike” would be fired or suspended, and that those suspended could also face disciplinary measures and further investigation.

Dismissals for participating in strike action

In April 2021, the Algerian Post Office threatened the workers on strike in Algiers with dismissal without notice. The postal employees had organised a one-week strike to protest against the government’s delay in fulfilling its promises regarding the disbursement of grants and incentive bonuses to workers.

Dismissals for participating in strike action

Following a 48-hour teachers' strike in Togo, demanding that the government respect the reimbursement of their exceptional bonus, 1,192 school principals were downgraded. An order was issued on 4 November 2021 by the Minister of Primary, Secondary, Technical Education and Handicrafts to replace just over 1,000 public school principals and ask teachers to resume their place in the classroom.

Dismissals for participating in strike action

Four members of the National Emancipated and Allied Workers’ Union of South Africa (NEAWUSA) were suspended on 2 May 2021 by the OVK, a milling company, in Tweespruit, South Africa, following a month-long strike over unsafe conditions in the workplace. The workers were attempting to raise safety concerns with the employer after several serious incidents and injuries had occurred.

Dismissals for participating in strike action

In South Africa, 500 workers were terminated by the Steve Tshwete Local Municipality for allegedly taking part in illegal strike action. The public employees were demanding the implementation of the adjustment of their salaries across the board and commenced strike action on 21 September 2021. The workers had been given a 48-hour return-to-work ultimatum on 8 November, and when they failed to return, they were given notice of the termination of their employment. The workers were reinstated a week later after the intervention of the SA Municipal Workers’ Union (SAMWU) and COSATU.

Dismissals for participating in strike action

In November 2021, the Employment Placement and Services Namibia (EPSN) dismissed 43 workers who had been on strike since 12 October, deeming their action illegal.

Dismissals for participating in strike action

Dockworkers in Liberia remained out of work for seven months after the management of APM Terminals Monrovia (APMT) suspended 24 employees and locked them out of the company’s facilities in October 2020 following their protest action over working conditions. With support from the Dock Workers’ Union (DOWUL), workers had been demanding better working conditions, including unpaid leave allowances, working hours, medical insurance and food allowance.

The struggle went on for over months, with many other workers supporting their suspended colleagues and echoing their demands.

On 21 April 2021, the Liberian Ministry of Labour announced its decision that APMT had “failed to prove its accusations against the 24 suspended workers” and called for the workers to be reinstated. APMT still refused to reinstate them, and on 4 May 2021 another letter from the Liberian minister of justice was sent, warning APMT to comply immediately and unconditionally with the government’s decision. On 7 May 2021, APMT finally conceded, and the workers returned to work with the clear understanding that the government expected APTM to seek to resolve all their concerns.

Right to free speech and assembly

41% of countries restricted free speech and assembly.

26%41%

Countries which restricted free speech and assembly increased from 26% of countries in 2014 to 41% of countries in 2022.

15%

15% of countries in Europe restricted free speech and assembly.

Compared with 22% in 2021
24%

24% of countries in the Americas restricted free speech and assembly.

Compared with 20% in 2021
45%

45% of countries in Africa restricted free speech and assembly.

Compared with 50% in 2021
84%

84% of countries in the Middle East and North Africa restricted free speech and assembly.

Compared with 83% in 2021
61%

61% of countries in Asia-Pacific restricted free speech and assembly.

No change from 2021

Right to free speech and assembly

On May Day 2021, 212 demonstrators were detained in Istanbul, Turkey, for attempting to hold a protest in defiance of the government’s strict coronavirus lockdown rules. In the lead-up to the historic day, police closed all roads leading in to Taksim Square, the site where 34 people were killed in a 1977 May Day protest. Due to security concerns, a ban on May Day demonstrations in Taksim Square has been in effect for several years.

Right to free speech and assembly

Throughout 2021, health sector workers held multiple protests against the enactment of the Health Emergency Law passed on 4 February 2021, which prohibits strikes and protests by health sector workers. This law was passed without having been agreed by the workers. Trade union organisations have demanded guarantees that they can carry out their work in decent working conditions and that freedom of association will be allowed; however, their demands have not been heeded.

Right to free speech and assembly

When the Kazakh people started organising peaceful protests for democracy and social justice in January 2022, the police and armed forces responded with extreme brutality, killing more than 160 people and arresting more than 8,000 people.

Right to free speech and assembly

On 18 May 2021, the Bobruisk District and City Court convicted the chair of the workplace union at the JSC “Belshina” (tyre works), Sergei Gurlo. Gurlo was found guilty of violation of Article 369 of the criminal code for “insulting a law enforcement officer on social media”, which he allegedly did in 2020. Sergei was sentenced to 18 months of restriction of freedom in a clear attempt to restrict the right to expression of a trade union leader. The case was tried in closed hearing, and Sergei was forced to sign a non-disclosure document concerning the criminal case materials.

Right to free speech and assembly

On 8 June 2021, President Alexander Lukashenko signed new legislation that punishes those accused of participating in unauthorised demonstrations with imprisonment of up to three years. Those who are found to have participated in or promoted "extremist activity" would face up to six years in jail. The definition of “extremist activity” was not clearly defined in the new legislation, and fear arose that the new provisions would be used to suppress any dissent. This new law follows laws enacted on 24 May 2021 making it compulsory to obtain a permit from the authorities to organise mass events and prohibiting journalists from reporting live from such events.

Right to free speech and assembly

On 1 May 2021, May Day celebrations by the Chitungwiza District branch of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) were prevented from going ahead by the police, who came to the venue, harassed workers, denied them entrance to the hall and threatened to arrest them.

The ZCTU regional official present demanded that the police provide a written explanation for banning the event, which the senior police officer in charge refused to do.

ZCTU has experienced many such situations for a long time. People sent from the president’s office or the police themselves interrupt ZCTU activities, harass and disperse workers or they demand to see programmes or to sit in on the meetings.

Right to free speech and assembly

On 20 October 2021, public sector employees who went to deliver a petition to the Public Service Ministry were met with what they described as an “unprecedented show of force”. The petition called for a salary review for 2021, an end to casualisation of the public service, stopping the privatisation of the public service and stopping trade union bashing.

The national commissioner of police banned the march, citing “national security” and “public safety and order”. When workers gathered to march and to hand over the petition, having followed all necessary protocol, the police dispersed workers using tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets. Two buses carrying public service workers, including members of the Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT) and the Swaziland Democratic Nurses Union (SDNU), were stopped by the police, and tear gas was fired at them. The doors of the bus were closed. As workers tried to leave, they were shot at. Eventually the back windows were broken, and workers managed to escape. A total of 36 were reportedly injured, and a young bystander was killed. Other reports said that at least 80 people were injured in the violence in the Eswatini capital, Mbabane, and the city of Manzini.

Right to free speech and assembly

In December 2021, the Municipal Council of Mbabane, Eswatini, denied public sector associations (PSAs), which include the Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT), permission to march across the city to deliver a petition to the Ministry of Public Service.

The letter from the municipality referred to a directive received from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development to “indefinitely suspend the issuance of permits for all processions within urban areas”, dated 21st October 2021.

Right to free speech and assembly

Pro-democracy protests in Eswatini have been ongoing since May 2021, with trade unions and other civil society groups calling for democratic elections and an end to absolute monarchy in the country, which bans political parties from participating in elections. Throughout these protests, it is estimated that 72 protestors have been killed by police and government forces. Hundreds have been injured, while some remain missing. Some activists have gone into hiding and others have fled into exile. In a statement on 18 October 2021, Eswatini’s commerce minister, Mancoba Khumalo, stated that workers risked losing their jobs if they participated in the pro-democracy protests against King Mswati.

Right to free speech and assembly

After the coup in January 2022, trade unions in Burkina Faso attempted to organise a rally. They were prevented from doing so by the military junta. Since then, unions have been unable to organise collective actions.

Right to free speech and assembly

On 27 May 2021 the government of Sri Lanka issued a decree making it almost impossible for 12,000 village government officers to strike, and it stripped hundreds of thousands of other public sector workers of their basic rights. The decree was a response to a threatened strike by the government officers who were demanding COVID-19 vaccinations. The decree claimed that the government services and departments under the strike ban were “essential” in the “face of the COVID-19 pandemic.” The union representing village workers had to immediately call off the impending industrial action.

Right to free speech and assembly

The Fijian police denied the Fiji Trades Union Congress (FTUC) a permit to march and hold a rally in Suva on 1st May 2021. No reason was given in writing, but the FTUC was told verbally that there was concern about the COVID-19 pandemic. No restrictions were being applied to other gatherings, such as sports and recreational activities, however.

This was the sixth year in a row that a permit to march was denied to the FTUC. Despite the government’s repeated assurances to the ILO and the UN Human Rights Council of its full respect for workers’ and human rights, including the right to peaceful assembly, it seemingly had no intention of honouring its commitments.

Right to free speech and assembly

Bangladeshi police repeatedly banned union meetings and then physically stopped participants from joining a meeting where a regional committee of the IndustriALL Bangladesh Council (IBC) was to be formed.

The IBC is the coordinating body of Bangladeshi affiliates of the global union IndustriALL. On 24 September 2021, a meeting was planned to take place in the Bangladesh Independent Garment Workers Union Federation (BIGUF) office in Chattogram to form a regional committee. However, a phone call from the police to IBC’s senior vice president, Salauddin Shapon, put a stop to that.

Another meeting was planned in a different area the following day. But again, the police contacted the vice president to say the meeting could not take place there either.

In a third attempt, the IBC decided to hold the meeting at the office of another affiliate, the Bangladesh Textile & Garment Workers League (BTGWL). When IBC leaders arrived, police officers, including some in plain clothes, blocked the gate and did not allow anyone to enter.

Right to free speech and assembly

Since August 2021 when they took power in Afghanistan, the Taliban have severely restricted the rights to peaceful assembly and to freedom of expression. In Herat, Taliban fighters lashed protesters and fired weapons indiscriminately to disperse the crowd, killing two men and wounding at least eight more. The Taliban subsequently banned protests that did not have prior approval from the Justice Ministry in Kabul.

Right to free speech and assembly

Samira Nasser and Sabah Hassan, two members of the executive office of the General Federation of Iraq Trade Unions (GFITU) and employed in public sector companies, were accused of defamation for Facebook posts and were subsequently referred for administrative investigation on “malicious charges”. Both were demoted and transferred to other public companies. Samira Nasser, who worked as an agricultural engineer in a dairy factory, was transferred to the hydraulic industries company. GFITU organised a solidarity campaign and managed to have the transfer reversed after more than two months.

Right to free speech and assembly

On 14 January 2022, which corresponds to the tenth anniversary of the Tunisian revolution, dozens of thousands of Tunisians opposed to the dictatorship took to the streets but were unable to demonstrate, as thousands of police blocked access to Avenue Habib Bourguiba, the capital's main avenue, and used water cannons, truncheons, tear gas and arrests – with physical violence – against the protesters. Some of the protesters arrested were released the same day while others were to be referred to the courts.

Right to justice

52%66%

Countries which denied workers access to justice increased from 52% of countries in 2015 to 66% of countries in 2022.

32%

32% of countries in Europe denied workers access to justice.

Compared with 34% in 2021
77%

77% of countries workers in the Americas denied workers access to justice.

Compared with 76% in 2021
90%

90% of countries in Africa denied workers access to justice.

Compared with 76% in 2021
79%

79% of countries in the Middle East and North Africa denied workers access to justice.

Compared with 83% in 2021
70%

70% of countries in Asia-Pacific denied workers access to justice.

Compared with 74% in 2021

Right to justice

16 December 2021 marked the ten-year anniversary of the tragedy in Zhanaozen, Kazakhstan, where police opened fire on protestors, killing 17 and injuring more than 100 workers. The violence put a stop to a seven-month-long strike, involving more than 3,000 workers demanding a wage increase. This case was subject to extensive review by international bodies, which all expressed concern about the lack of independent, impartial and effective investigation into the human rights violations committed in connection with the protests in Zhanaozen. They called on the government to immediately carry out such an investigation. However, to this date the government of Kazakhstan has not responded to the recommendations, and no prosecution or conviction has been made in the ten years since the events.

Right to justice

Four years after the events, there is no progress in investigation of the violent attack on Dimitri Sinyavsky, the Chairman of the Karaganda Regional Branch of the Sectorial Union of Fuel and Energy Workers, which took place on 10 November 2018. Absence of effective investigations and judgements against parties guilty of violent attacks on trade unionists reinforce the climate of insecurity for victims and impunity for perpetrators which are extremely damaging to the exercise of freedom of association rights in Kazakhstan.

Right to justice

In Kazakhstan, the restrictions imposed by the court sentence on the freedom of Larisa Nilolayvna Kharkova, former leader of the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions of Kazakhstan (CNTUK), expired on 9 November 2021. However, she was still banned from holding leadership positions in non-governmental and other non-commercial organisations. The term of this sanction imposed by the court on 25 July 2017 expires on 5 October 2022. Kharkova was unable to open a settlement account in any of the Kazakhstan banks, and her personal bank account is still blocked under the conditions imposed in the course of the examination of the criminal case against her.

In a similar way, the former activist of the Sectoral Fuel and Energy Workers’ Union, Amin Eleusinov, who was convicted in 2017 and in May 2018 released early from serving an imprisonment sentence, was still banned from holding leadership positions in non-governmental organisations until 2022.

The former leader of the Sectoral Fuel and Energy Workers’ Union, Nurbek Kushakbayev, who was convicted in 2017 for calling on others to join the alleged illegal strike, has completed his prison sentence. However, he was unable to resume his trade union work.

Right to justice

On 15 June 2021, officers of the Minsk City Department of Interior made a search of the private house of the SPB vice president, Gennadiy Bykov. On 14 July 2021, officers of the Polotsk District Department of Interior searched the apartment of the president of the Free Trade Union of Belarus, Nikolai Sharakh. On 21 July 2021, the authorities searched the house of the chair of the SPB Internal Auditing Committee, Victor Stukov.

Right to justice

On 26 June 2021, officers of the State Security Committee searched the regional office of the Belorussian Radio Electronics Workers’ Union (REPU) in Brest. On 16 July 2021, law enforcement officers appeared at REPU’s headquarters in Minsk and broke down the door and sealed the other. Later on, the law enforcement officers claimed that they were investigating another organisation and that the search had nothing to do with the activities of the REPU. This was the second time in six months that the Minsk headquarters of REPU were raided. On 16 February 2021, State Security had already searched the premises and seized communications and other equipment and documents. The homes of several REPU activists were searched at the same time. Law enforcement officers claimed the searches were a part of the investigation into the funding of the union.

Right to justice

On 8 July 2021, four prominent members of the Belarusian Independent Trade Union at JSC Naftan in Navapolatsk had their homes searched and two were detained. The leaders whose homes were searched were trade union lawyer Aliaksandr Kapshul, deputy chairperson of the primary organisation Jury Hashau; deputy chairperson Dzianis Hurski; and secretary-treasurer Dzmitry Koyra. Hursky and Koyra were detained for 72 hours and then released. The authorities alleged that the searches and detentions were in relation to a criminal case about the damage of the paintwork on Siarhei Brykun's car, which occurred in October 2020.

Right to justice

In the Philippines, Rosanilla Consad, union secretary of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) for Region XIII and assistant vice principal of San Vicente National High School, was arrested on a fabricated charge of attempted homicide in April 2021. Subjected to interrogation without her legal counsel, she was presented in a press conference as a “high ranking” official of the New People's Army, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines.

Right to justice

Dodo Bheel, a worker at Sindh Engro Coal Mining Company (SECMC) in Pakistan, was detained by security guards of the company for 14 days for interrogation over the theft of scrap from a company store. Bheel died of his injuries. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), Bheel had been tortured by the guards. The workers and their relatives held sit-ins and demonstrations after his death, demanding an immediate and impartial inquiry. Their protest was violently suppressed by the police, who moved into action with their batons and tear gas and tried to arrest some of the 150 protesters.

Right to justice

In Malaysia, five local leaders of the National Union of Transport Equipment and Allied Industries Workers (NUTEAIW) were still out of work six years after HICOM Automotive manufacturer dismissed 32 NUTEAIW members for attending a union briefing after working hours, outside of company premises, in February 2016. The briefing was about a deadlock in the collective bargaining, and the company accused the workers of “tarnishing the image” of the company.

After mediation meetings at the industrial relations department, 27 union members were reinstated. However, the company refused to reinstate the remaining five local union leaders. The five workers won termination compensation in court but failed to gain reinstatement. NUTEAIW exhausted all domestic legal avenues and decided in July 2021 to file a complaint with the ILO.

HICOM has a notorious record of union-busting in Malaysia. In 2013, HICOM and its sister company Isuzu HICOM dismissed 18 NUTEAIW members for exercising their trade union rights.

Right to justice

In a travesty of justice, on 11 June 2011 Venezuelan trade unionist Rodney Álvarez was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment for homicide. To this day, he is still seeking a fair trial while facing dire circumstances in prison.

In 2011, Álvarez was prosecuted for the alleged murder of worker Renny Rojas during a workers’ assembly on the premises of the state-owned company Ferrominera Orinoco of Corporación Venezolana de Guayana (CVG). The assembly was taking place to choose the commission tasked with holding elections for the executive committee of the Sintraferrominera trade union.

The proceedings brought against Rodney Álvarez reflect the lack of separation of powers in the country and imply a clear denial of justice, with eight interruptions and up to 25 preliminary hearings, and with Álvarez having been the victim of three serious knife and gun attacks perpetrated with total impunity during the more than ten years in which he was held in pretrial custody.

Nothing in the judicial file confirmed that Álvarez was armed, let alone that he fired the shots. The judge also dismissed all the defence witnesses who were present at the scene and who saw that another person perpetrated the killing. The statement by the National Guard officer on security duty at the enterprise at the time, who declared that he had detained the other person for firing shots, was disregarded.

Right to justice

In Honduras, the pervasive climate of repression, physical violence and intimidation against workers and trade unionists was compounded by the government’s failure to pursue the many historic cases of murders and other violent crimes. The labour justice system remained broken, and only a handful of the hundreds of murder cases were solved, usually many years later.

Right to justice

In Colombia, the pervasive climate of repression, physical violence and intimidation against workers and trade unionists was compounded by the government’s failure to pursue the many historic cases of murders and other violent crimes. The labour justice system remained broken, and only a handful of the hundreds of murder cases were solved, usually many years later.

Right to justice

In Guatemala, the pervasive climate of repression, physical violence and intimidation against workers and trade unionists was compounded by the government’s failure to pursue the many historic cases of murders and other violent crimes. The labour justice system remained broken, and only a handful of the hundreds of murder cases were solved, usually many years later.

Right to justice

Two years after their unfair dismissals, Luximun Badal and Shavindra Dinoo Sunassee, respectively president of the Union of Post Office Workers Branch No. 2 and ex-president of the Airports of Mauritius Limited Employees Union, still seek their reinstatement.

Badal had been dismissed by Mauritius Post Ltd on 18 June 2020 for alleged refusal of a unilateral transfer following disputes over the negotiation of a new collective bargaining agreement for the postal workers, the previous agreement having lapsed on 31 December 2017. Sunassee was dismissed a few days later by the Airports of Mauritius Ltd after several attempts by management to unilaterally vary the terms of a collective bargaining agreement to which Sundassee was opposed.

Right to justice

The Tunis Court of First Instance annulled the decision of the UGTT National Council (which took place in Hammamet from 24 to 26 August 2020) to convene an extraordinary non-elective congress, claiming that the statutes of this trade union organisation do not provide for the organisation of this type of congress by its executive bureau. This is a serious judicial interference in UGTT’s right to freely organise its activities.

Right to justice

Concerns grew for the well-being of Esmail Abdi, former secretary general of the Iranian Teachers’ Trade Association (ITTA), who has been imprisoned on numerous occasions since 2006 on trumped up charges of “propaganda against the state” and “espionage”. He was sentenced to five years in 2016 on fictitious charges of “spreading propaganda against the system” and “gathering and colluding to commit crimes against national security”. To prevent his release, on 11 January 2021, at the end of his previous sentence, the Iranian authorities executed a suspended ten-year sentence related to a 2011 case , thereby imprisoning him until 2031. Long imprisonment and ill treatment in the prison have severely affected his health. In the meantime, Esmail’s family (wife, two daughters and a son) were being harassed and victimised by the security forces and considered to be at serious risk.

Right to justice

Mourad Ghedia, president of Algerian union SNAPAP/CGATA Justice Sector Workers, was arrested on 5 April 2021 and placed under a detention order in El-Harrach prison. On the date of his arrest, Mr Ghedia went to the Bab Ezzouar police station in Algiers following police summonses. He was immediately arrested and brought before a judge; he had no access to legal representation. The judge placed him under a detention order without providing reasons for his incarceration. He was sentenced by the court to a six-month suspended sentence. Following a large international campaign, he was eventually released after two months and ten days of detention.

Mr Ghedia, a clerk by profession, had previously been suspended from his employment in 2012 for almost three years, along with 57 other people, for taking strike action. Following complaints to the ILO, Mr Ghedia and the suspended members were reinstated, and he resumed his duties as registrar between 2015 and 2018, when he was again dismissed without cause.

Right to civil liberties

25%47%

Countries arresting and detaining workers increased from 25% of countries in 2014 to 47% of countries in 2022.

33%

33% of countries arrested and detained workers.

Compared with 29% in 2021
52%

52% of countries arrested and detained workers.

Compared with 56% in 2021
36%

36% of countries arrested and detained workers.

No change from 2021
47%

47% of countries arrested and detained workers.

Compared with 44% in 2021
83%

83% of countries arrested and detained workers.

No change from 2021

Right to civil liberties

In the afternoon of 24 February 2022, unknown persons in civilian clothes broke into the In the afternoon of 24 February 2022, unknown persons in civilian clothes broke into the office of the Free Metalworkers’ Union (SPM) without presenting documents, searched the office, and seized office equipment and mobile phones from the office management and employees. The SPM deputy chairman, Aleksandr Evdokimchik, was arrested and taken away to an undisclosed location. Earlier in the morning, the executive committee of BKDP, the national trade union centre and ITUC affiliate, could not get in touch with Igor Komlik, the lawyer of the trade union who, it was later revealed, was also arrested by law enforcement agencies.

Right to civil liberties

On the morning of 21 September 2021, law enforcement agencies searched the apartment of Volha Brytsikava, local leader of the primary trade union organisation of the Belarusian Independent Trade Union (BITU) at JSC Naftan. Her computer was seized and she was arrested and detained. Two more BITU members, Andrey Berezovsky and Roman Shkodin, were arrested and detained for seven and 15 days, respectively.

At Grodno Azot, the vice chairperson of the BITU local union, Valiantsin Tseranevich, and BITU members Andrei Paheryla, Vladimir Zhurauka, Grigory Ruban, Dmitry Ilyushenko and Aleksey Sidor were detained by the police.

In Zhlobin, Aliaksandr Hashnikau, secretary treasurer of the BITU primary branch at the Belarusian Metallurgical Plant BMZ, was arrested on 17 September 2021 and arbitrarily detained. According to his wife, he disappeared in mid-September and was located a week later.

BITU president Maksim Pazniakou was detained on 17 September but later released and fined US$350 for a social media post from 2020, featuring a Belarusian music group, later labelled by authorities as extremist.

Right to civil liberties

On the morning of 23 August 2021, a leader of the Algarve Hotel Industry Union, accompanied by two union delegates, was arrested while distributing union information to the workers of the Hapimag Resort Albufeira, Portugal. Hotel management called in the National Republican Guard (GNR) to prevent the union leader from carrying out his trade union activities inside the establishment, a right foreseen in the constitution of the Portuguese republic, in the labour code and in the collective agreement for the tourism sector.

The union leader tried to explain to the GNR officers that they were exercising a constitutional right, but the GNR officers complied with the employer's request and detained the union leader, taking him to the Albufeira police station. The leader was charged and summoned to appear before the Albufeira Court.

The Algarve Hotel Industry Union and the Algarve Hotel Workers’ Union both publicly supported the worker concerned. His union, Sindicato dos Trabalhadores da Indústria de Hotelaria, Turismo, Restaurantes e Similares do Algarve (Hotel, Tourism, Restaurant and Allied Workers of the Algarve), recalled that the management of Hapimag Resort Albufeira had recently suspended the union delegates from their duties as head and deputy head of kitchen for demanding the improvement of working conditions.

The workers’ main grievances included poor working conditions and the violation of health and safety standards, issues that they had been trying to solve through negotiation for two years.

Right to civil liberties

On 28 January 2022, the Federation of Trade Unions of Kyrgyzstan (FTUKg) planned to hold the Federation Council, which was supposed to set the date for the Unification Congress. In the morning of the 28th, at 7:50 a.m., Ryskul Babayeva, FTUKg deputy chairperson, was arbitrarily detained by police officers of the Alamedin district on a false denunciation. After investigation by the police, it was revealed that the denunciation was slanderous. Babayeva was released and was able to attend the council.

Right to civil liberties

In April 2021, union representatives at the Tirana International Airport (Albania) attempted to open negotiations with management on health risks in relation to the physical and mental exhaustion of workers in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of engaging in dialogue with the unions, the management unilaterally cut the workers’ salaries and resorted to harassment and intimidation against union members and workers. Faced with increased pressure, the workers declared themselves medically unfit for duty in accordance with international standards in the civil aviation sector. In response, the government deployed law enforcement forces, removing workers from the premises and detaining union leaders for several days in police custody or under house arrest, threatening to take legal action against union leaders and engaging replacement workers from other countries.

Right to civil liberties

The secretary general of the Confédération Syndicale du Congo (CSC), Fidèle Kiyangi Matangila, who is also in charge of the Central Workers of Banks and Financial Institutions and president of the National Intersyndicale of Public Administration (INAP), was arrested at the administrative building of the civil service. His arrest by the security forces followed a protest action by union members against non-payment of wages and bonuses over a period of four months by the financial service employer.

Right to civil liberties

On 11 March 2022, Haleh Safarzadeh and Alireza Saghafi, who both serve as members of the Centre for Workers' Rights in Iran, were arrested, together with 17 other students and labour activists, during a private gathering at Mr Saghafi’s workplace. They were imprisoned at Kachuei Prison in Karaj. While the activists were later released, Haleh Safarzadeh and Alireza Saghafi were held in detention in one of the harshest prisons for serious criminal offences.

The two labour leaders had already been arrested, together with other worker rights’ defenders, on 26 April 2019 while meeting peacefully in a public park. They were put on trial by the Karaj Revolutionary Court on 24 August 2019 on the spurious charge of conducting “propaganda against the system” and sentenced to one year in prison.

Right to civil liberties

Farzaneh Zilabi, the defence lawyer for the Haft Tappeh sugar cane workers in Iran, was sentenced by the Ahvaz Revolutionary Court to one year in prison on 13 September 2021 for “propaganda activities against the state”. In addition to the prison sentence, Zilabi received a two-year ban on leaving the country. On 16 May 2021, she was issued a six-month ban from practicing law.

Following the privatisation of the Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Agro-Industrial Complex in 2016, workers and the syndicate organised a number of strikes, most recently in August 2021, against the continuous unpaid wages of employees and the alleged corruption of the former owners.

Right to civil liberties

Abdel-Wahab Radwan, vice chairman of the Syndicate Committee of Public Transport Authority Employees in Egypt, was arrested in May 2021 because of his trade union activities. The trade union leader was still in pretrial detention in 2022 pending the hearing of his case. He was charged with “being a member of a terrorist group and misusing social media”.

Right to civil liberties

Fellah Hamoudi, member of the Executive Bureau of SNAPAP and CGATA and president of the Office of the Algerian League for Human Rights (LADDH), was arrested on 19 February 2022 in the wilaya of Tlemcen. Fellah Hamoudi had been continuously harassed over the past months in connection to his statements on the “Al Magharibia” television channel. The prosecutor found Hamoudi’s comments concerning the number of prisoners of conscience in Algeria offensive to the Ministry of Interior and “false or malicious”. Hamoudi was also accused of running an “unaccredited” association in connection to his position in the LADDH. His home was searched by the police on 12 January 2022, during which time his laptop and personal phone were confiscated. On 20 February 2022, the Tlemcen Court convicted him and sentenced him to a fine of one hundred thousand dinars and imprisonment of three years.

Right to civil liberties

In the early hours of the 27th of May 2021, a simultaneous police operation was carried out in several municipalities in the department of Arauca, Colombia. Several trade union leaders of the Arauca Campesino Association (ACA), a FENSUAGRO affiliate, were arrested without motive: Anderson Rodríguez Rodríguez, ACA president; Jhon Alexander Romero, vice president and human rights secretary of ACA; Camilo Espinel, education secretary of ACA and councillor of the municipality of Saravena; Fredy Camargo, councillor of Fortul and coordinator of the Technical Committee of ACA; Ruth Pita, councillor of Fortul and ACA associate; Helbert Alonso Ramírez Castro, ACA associate and accountant; and Samuel Acosta, ACA associate and member of the Tame Veredal Committee.

Right to civil liberties

Police arrested 31 people, including the general secretary of the Ceylon Teachers Union (CTU), on 8 July 2021 for taking part in a protest held near Sri Lanka’s parliament against the proposed National Defence University (NDU) bill. The bill, first presented in 2018 under the previous government, has been widely denounced as a move intended to curb freedom of thought and expression in universities. Arrested workers were held for several days until a campaign for their release, supported by global trade unions, led to their being freed.

Right to civil liberties

On 21 October 2021, Chilean special forces of the Carabineros, using batons, water cannons and pepper spray, brutally repressed the leaders of the sixteen trade union organisations that make up the Mesa del Sector Público (MSP). Union leaders, including José Pérez Debelli, president of the National Association of Public Employees (ANEF), were detained but released a few hours later in response to pressure from the trade union organisations on the government. The MSP representatives were delivering to the government a list of demands on wage adjustment and improvement of working conditions. This formal delivery is an annual practice that initiates the process of branch negotiation of the MSP, which represents about 500,000 public workers.

Right to civil liberties

On 11 October 2021, garment workers assembled outside Denim Clothing Company, a supplier for global fashion brands in Karachi, Pakistan, to protest against the factory’s inhumane working conditions, routine intimidation, lack of social security, arbitrary dismissals since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and refusal to pay the minimum wage.

Two vans arrived on the scene, and three men in plain clothes started ruthlessly beating up the workers with sticks. Several workers sustained severe injuries, including a dislocated elbow. Police forced protesting workers into the vans and held them at the police station for six hours, where they received further beatings from police. They were released only after they were forced to sign a document stating they would not protest against the company again.

Right to civil liberties

On 15 April 2021, around 40 military officers were deployed to arrest the director of the Solidarity Trade Union of Myanmar (STUM), Daw Myo Aye. She was charged under section 505A of the penal code for participating in the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), leading protests, and encouraging civilians and civil servants to join the CDM. She faced up to three years in prison. Daw Myo Aye was denied bail and remained under detention, with limited access to medical facilities, despite having severe health problems.

Earlier in 2021, arrest warrants for 34 other prominent trade union leaders had been issued and executed. Most of them were summarily prosecuted and sentenced to jail.

Right to civil liberties

The president of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), Yang Kyeung-soo, was arrested on 2 September 2021 in a predawn raid of his Seoul office. Hundreds of policemen encircled the building as officers pried open the door.

The KCTU had organised a rally in downtown Seoul on 3 July, calling on the government to address inequality deepened by the pandemic. The government did not permit the rally, citing super-spreader concerns. It later issued a warrant for Yang’s arrest for allegedly violating the Criminal Act provisions against general obstruction of traffic, the Assembly and Demonstration Act and the Act on Infectious Disease Control and Prevention. The allegations were contested by the KCTU: about 8,000 union members attended the rally, carefully following government guidelines for social distancing. After the event, only three attendees tested positive for Covid, with little evidence to tie their infections to the rally.

His detention seemed more designed to disrupt the KCTU’s preparations for a national strike on 20 October to call on all its 1.1 million members to demand improvements to workers' rights. Yang is the 13th KTCU president in a row to be jailed since the federation was unbanned in 1997.

Right to civil liberties

Sixty-seven workers and activists were detained by Tamil Nadu police during a protest on 18 December 2021 by electronics workers. They were detained for more than 24 hours. Twenty-two activists, including leaders of the Indian Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), were put behind bars for extending support to the workers. The CITU leaders were granted bail and released on 23 December.

The protest – by around 3,000 women workers employed by Bharat FIH, a subsidiary of FIH Mobile and Foxconn Technology Group, which manufactures mobile phones – began on 17 December. It was triggered by an incident two days earlier in which 159 workers had fallen ill due to food poisoning at their hostel. The workers, all hired through contractors, had long complained of overcrowding and poor food.

Right to civil liberties

Lee Cheuk Yan, the general secretary of the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU), together with seven others, was sentenced on 12 December 2021 to 14 months in prison for “inciting, organising and participating” in a candlelight vigil on 4 June 2020. The annual event, to commemorate the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, was organised by the now-disbanded Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, of which Lee Cheuk-yan was the chair. The sentence will run concurrently with the 20-month prison sentence Lee Cheuk-yan was already serving for organising and participating in pro-democracy rallies in 2019.

Right to civil liberties

In Hong Kong, five members of the General Union of Hong Kong Speech Therapists (GUHKST), including the union chair and vice chair, Li Wenling and Yang Yiyi, were arrested on 22 July 2021. Their phones, computers and trade union leaflets were taken away by the police, and the union’s bank account and assets were frozen. According to the police, they had “conspired to publish, distribute, exhibit or copy seditious publications”. Both Li and Yang were prosecuted, remanded and denied bail. The other three members were granted bail. In the hearing on 30 August, the judge remanded all five union officers in custody pending their next hearing on 24 October 2021.

The “seditious” publications were three illustrated e-books for children with speech problems published by the union in 2020 and explaining Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movements of 2019 and 2020. Sedition is a crime under a colonial-era law and carries up to two years in jail. Since the democracy protests, police and prosecutors have begun regularly using the sedition law, along with the National Security Law, to clamp down on political speech and views.

Right to civil liberties

In 2018, Jasic Technology, China, dismissed workers for trying to organise their own trade union, and more than 40 workers were arrested and accused of “gathering a crowd to disturb social order”. Since then, many labour activists and supporters have been prosecuted and imprisoned on spurious charges, and the exact whereabouts of other workers implicated in the protests at the Jasic factory remain unknown. The authorities have used criminal prosecutions, harassment and surveillance to instil fear and prevent those affected and their families from speaking out. After their prosecution and sentencing two years ago, the following activists remained unreachable, their whereabouts unknown, and no further information on their trial could be accessed: Fu Changguo, staff member of the Dagongzhe Workers’ Centre, and worker activists Zheng Shiyou and Liang Xiaogang.

Many others have been summarily prosecuted and sentenced to jail time while the government continued to exert tremendous pressure and intimidation on the activists and their families.

Right to civil liberties

On 25 February 2022 “Mengzhu,” a well-known Chinese food-delivery worker activist, was detained by Beijing police in a raid on his apartment. Mengzhu, whose real name is Chen Guojiang, was charged with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”, a catch-all category often used against activists in China. Chen was leader of the Delivery Riders’ Alliance, which he founded in 2019. Reaching about 15,000 delivery workers through social media, the alliance developed into a union-like organisation for food delivery workers in Beijing and had connections with delivery workers in other cities.

Shortly before his arrest, Chen had published a video about a bonus scam by Ele.me, owned by Alibaba, China’s biggest e-commerce company. It was watched by millions and provoked great public criticism against Ele.me. Media reports of Chen’s detention were blocked or deleted. Chinese internet activists broadcast an open letter by Chen’s father seeking assistance with legal fees and donated more than 120,000 yuan (US$18,350).

In April 2022, Chen’s WeChat channel, where the open letter had been posted, was permanently banned. Online discussion of Chen’s case was also censored and shut down by the police. Lawyers and students in contact with Chen’s family were investigated and harassed.

Right to civil liberties

The workers at NagaWorld hotel and casino complex in Cambodia had been on strike since 18 December 2021 in protest at the unfair dismissal of 365 workers. Over 1,000 workers joined the strike, which took the form of peaceful sit-ins outside the company premises. The LRSU union made every effort to negotiate a solution, but management refused to talk and even failed to attend a mediation session convened by the Ministry of Labour.

On 31 December 2021, police raided the LRSU’s office, confiscating union documents, computers and mobile phones. Nine people were arrested. A further seventeen arrests were made on 3 January 2022 followed by three more on 4 January, including the arrest of the LRSU president, Sithar Chhim, who was forcibly dragged from the picket line and into a police car.

By February 2022, eight of those arrested remained in detention, namely the union chair, Sithar Chhim; union secretary Chhim Sokhorn; union advisor Sok Narith, and union activists Ry Sovandy, Sun Sreypich, Hai Sopheap, Klaing Soben, Touch Sereymeas. They were denied pre-trial release and said they did not have enough water and were not allowed to contact their families. They were charged with incitement, which carries a sentence of up to five years in prison. In March 2022, they were finally released from jail on bail.

Right to civil liberties

Rong Chhun, president of the Cambodian Confederation of Unions (CCU), was arrested at his home in July 2020 after claiming that the demarcation of the border between Cambodia and Vietnam had stripped several farmers of their land. He was charged with “incitement to commit a felony or cause social unrest”. On 18 August 2021, Rong Chhun, the president of the Cambodian Confederation of Unions (CCU), was sentenced to two years in prison, the maximum sentence for this offence, as well as a fine of two million riels (US$490).

Rong Chhun and Sar Kanika and Ton Nimol, two other labour fellow labour rights advocates, were freed on appeal on 11 November 2021. The Phnom Penh Appeals Court dropped the remainder of the sentences against them, but they all remained on probation and faced restrictions related to travel and other activities for three years.

Right to civil liberties

On 6 August 2021, the Bangladeshi Industrial Police filed a criminal case against Babul Akter, general secretary of Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation (BGIWF), and 24 union leaders and members in relation to incidents at Crossline Factory (Pvt) Ltd and Crossline Knit Fabrics Ltd. The factory management also filed a criminal case against its workers. These criminal complaints were filed after the factory workers formed two unions in their respective factories and filed registration applications with the Department of Labour in March 2021.

Right to civil liberties

In February 2021, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) brought criminal cartel charges against the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and against the CFMEU-ACT secretary, Jason O’Mara.

On 17 August 2021, the commonwealth director of public prosecutions rejected the charges.

This was the third recent criminal prosecution that the ACCC had brought against the CFMEU, using the Consumer and Competition Act to attack the right of trade unions to collectively bargain. In 2012 and 2013, the ACCC had alleged that the CFMEU-ACT had tried to induce local steel fixers and scaffolders to set a minimum price to afford a wage rise. This, according to the ACCC, amounted to cartel behaviour. For the CFMEU, the ACCC has engaged in the blatant victimisation of trade union leader Jason O'Mara, who went through three years of trial by media and attack on his character.

Violent attacks on workers

29%34%

Countries which exposed workers to violent attacks increased from 29% of countries in 2014 to 34% of countries in 2022.

26%

Workers experienced violent attacks in 26% of countries in Europe.

Compared with 12% in 2021
36%

Workers experienced violent attacks in 36% of countries in the Americas.

Compared with 40% in 2021
31%

Workers experienced violence in 31% of countries in Africa.

Compared with 33% in 2021
42%

Workers experienced violent attacks in 42% of countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

Compared with 44% in 2021
43%

Workers experienced violence in 43% of countries in Asia-Pacific.

Compared with 35% in 2021

Violent attacks on workers

On 16 June 2021, Edgar Alejandro Talento and Jaime Col Ical, members of the company union at Fritolay Guatemala, were attacked by unknown assailants. Jaime escaped unscathed, but Edgar was severely injured and taken to the hospital.

Violent attacks on workers

In February 2022, as Quironsalud workers, a subsidiary of the German multinational Fresenius in Colombia, organised in a trade union and requested the opening of collective bargaining negotiations, Julian Parra and Claudia López, two of their elected leaders, received death threats. Claudia reported the details of these threats to local police, while Julian was forced to flee the country. International calls for Fresenius to publicly denounce these threats remained unheeded.

Violent attacks on workers

In the early days of January 2022, workers at Farplas automotive factory in Kocaeli province, Turkey, demanded a wage increase. Finding insufficient the pay rise offer made on 19 January, the workers halted work at the factory in protest, and the employer started negotiating with the United Metalworkers' Union, promising that no workers would be dismissed in this process. While production resumed the next day, the employer summarily dismissed nearly 150 workers, both members and non-members of the union, referring to their one-day strike as justification for their dismissal. In protest, the dismissed workers of Farplas decided to strike inside the factory. Police stormed the Farplas factory, dispersing the workers with pepper gas. Two people fainted during the intervention. One worker had his leg broken.

Violent attacks on workers

CGT activists were violently attacked in Paris and in Lyon, France, during a rally May Day 2021. Individuals damaged vehicles, made racist and homophobic insults, made remarks castigating the CGT's "communism", and called the CGT "collabos". The CGT counted no less than 21 injured, including four hospitalised in Paris. An investigation was opened for "deliberate violence and damage in a meeting" by the Paris public prosecutor's office.

Violent attacks on workers

In Belarus, on 5 March 2021, officers of the District Department of Interior in the City of Minsk disrupted the founding conference of the students’ free trade unions. Breaking into the facility in plain clothes with masked faces and no insignia, they resorted to violence, apprehending several participants of the meeting who were later on sentenced to 15 days of detention for “defying a legitimate instruction of an officer”. To justify this violent interference, the authorities claimed that the event was held by an illegal organisation. Yet the Free Trade Union of Belarus, which had organised the conference, is an officially registered and a functioning organisation.

Violent attacks on workers

Members of the Asociación Nacional de Enfermeras y Enfermeros Auxiliares de Honduras (ANEEAH) took to the streets to protest the murder the day before of their colleague, nursing student Keyla Martínez, which had occurred while she was in the custody of the National Police. In response to the protests, police officers violently beat up the workers, including union member Agustín Sánchez, who was left with serious injuries to his left shoulder.

Violent attacks on workers

In Honduras, during the month of October 2021, union leader Darlin Oviedo, president of the garment workers' union Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Compañía Jasper (SITRAJASPER), and the union's general secretary, Selvin Peña, were constantly followed by unidentified men. Oviedo was even chased by a heavily armed motorbike driver who threatened to shoot him, but fortunately the union leader was able to weave his way through traffic and escape. The threats began when workers demonstrated to demand that the garment factory reinstate workers seeking work after COVID-19 restrictions were eased.

Violent attacks on workers

On 10 February 2022, for the second day in a row, police fired tear gas and beat protestors with batons outside the SONAPI Free Trade Zone in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Striking workers were calling on Prime Minster Ariel Henry to increase the minimum wage in the garment industry from 500 gourdes a day (US$4.80) to 1,500 gourdes.

Violent attacks on workers

On 30 August 2021, members of the Sindicato de Trabajadores General Portuario, SINTRAGENPORT, of the Empresa Portuaria Nacional Santo Tomás de Castilla received death threats by unidentified individuals who called them. Members threatened were all members of the Board of Directors: Victor Oliva, general secretary; Marcos Eliú Castellanos Nufio, deputy general secretary; Edwin Martínez, secretary of finance; Rafael Aquino, secretary of inter-union relations; Arturo Arzú, secretary of social prevention; José Eduardo Saldaña, secretary of sports; and Melvin Larios, secretary of the consultative council. The union had denounced anomalies and acts of corruption in procurements.

Violent attacks on workers

On 31 March 2022, Carlos Mancilla and his family members received anonymous phone calls warning that they were being watched and mentioning each person in the family by name. The callers sent a photo of Mancilla’s house and said that they had followed his daughter but held back from killing her.

Mancilla is general secretary of the trade union centre CUS-G, president of Guatemala’s Tripartite Commission on Labor Relations and Freedom of Association, and a titular member of the ITUC General Council. These events took place in the context of increasing insecurity and attacks on the union movement in Guatemala and in addition to an explosion of unresolved labour disputes and a campaign to discredit and stigmatise workers’ representatives.

Violent attacks on workers

On 12 August 2021, union leaders of the National Union of Food Workers in Colombia, SINTRAIMAGRA and SINALTRAINAL, were threatened in Bugalagrande, Valle. On entering the headquarters of the Bugalagrande branch of SINTRAIMAGRA, the secretary found an envelope with a leaflet headed Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia and below with the logo of Las Águilas Negras, Bloque Occidental de Colombia, and a USB in which the following trade unionists were designated as “military targets”: Edwin Mejía, Francisco Vásquez, Fernando Castaño, Carlos Soto, Juan Camilo Jaramillo, Andrés Rubio, Onofre Esquivel, Wilson Riaño, Luis Herbert Peñaloza, Frank Acevedo, Gustavo Bedoya and Martin Agudelo.

Violent attacks on workers

On 29 April 2021, during demonstrations in the municipality of Copacabana, Antioquia (Colombia), a teacher and activist of the Antioquia Teachers' Association (Adida) was recording a police procedure with his mobile phone camera. At that moment, he was assaulted by members of the national police, who took his mobile phone and beat him. Subsequently, when he went to the police headquarters to claim his mobile phone, he was arbitrarily detained.

Violent attacks on workers

In Colombia, on 25 November 2021, on the eve of the elections for the designation of the leadership of the union Guincheros, Maquinistas y Grúas Móviles, the head of the union, Roberto Coria, who was seeking re-election, was the victim of an attempt on his life at the door of his home, where he was shot and sustained injuries. Days earlier there had been a similar attempt on his life, which was foiled because the assailant's weapon misfired. The attempts on Coria’s life were linked to the union elections, and it is believed that the attacks were perpetrated by a yellow union supported by the employers.

Violent attacks on workers

On 12 January 2022, Amalgamated Rural Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe (ARTUZ) members engaged in a protest action at the National Social Security Authority (NSSA) building, where the National Joint Negotiating Council (NJNC) meeting was taking place between the government and trade unions. The demonstrators were demanding the restoration of their salaries to 2018 levels – levels prior to the government’s implementation of austerity measures. As the teachers gathered at the venue, police arrived with guns and batons. The teachers were threatened, assaulted and made to lie on their stomachs. Sixteen leaders of ARTUZ were arrested, including the ARTUZ president, Obert Masaraure.

Violent attacks on workers

Since 22 November 2021, five thousand workers at Clover, which is South Africa’s largest dairy company and is owned by Israeli company Milco, have been on strike in response to job losses, pay cuts and health and safety concerns. Clover’s response was to hire a private police company armed with military vehicles and machine guns to intimidate the workers and break the strike. Workers faced threats, petrol bomb attacks and rubber bullets. On the nights of 7 and 8 January 2022, the cars of two striking workers were petrol bombed. On the night of 9 January, five carloads of men visited two striking workers and demanded that they end the strike. On the same night, another three striking workers received threatening phone calls demanding that they end the strike.

Violent attacks on workers

On 17 May 2021, striking civil servants led by Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) leader Ayuba Wabba were attacked by a mob mobilised by Governor El-Rufai while peacefully exercising their rights to protest. On 18 May 2021, the state government announced its decision to immediately dismiss all civil servants who took part in what is referred to as an unlawful strike.

Violent attacks on workers

On 26 April 2021, police officers attending a worker protest at the Thetsane industrial area in Maseru, Lesotho, shot at protesters with rubber bullets, leaving three hospitalised. The victims were part of a group of protesters who had gathered at the factories to demand a salary increase. Hundreds of factory workers had downed tools and organised a picket, which was eventually brutally dispersed by armed police officers.

Violent attacks on workers

On 20 May 2021, the police went to the home of Barry Abdoulaye, president of the Telecoms Union (FESATEL) in Guinea, at 2:45 a.m. and asked to enter. The doorman standing guard refused. The police told him to enter himself to look for a member of Mr Abdoulaye's family to talk to the police. After the doorman refused again, the police finally left the premises. This incident occurred as FESATEL expressed its opposition to the Guinean government's plan to impose a tax on all mobile phone calls in the country, which would have negative repercussions on investments of mobile phone companies and eventually on employment.

Violent attacks on workers

After participating in a picket in front of the Omar Bongo University in Gabon, Professor Mathurin Ovono Ebe, president of the Omar Bongo University section of the National Union of Teachers and Researchers (SNEC), was abducted by armed men at around 7 p.m. as he was returning home. The trade unionist was brutalised and threatened by unknown men. He filed a complaint with the police.

Violent attacks on workers

In May 2021 Sipho Shiba, a bus conductor based in Manzini, Eswatini, was assaulted by three police officers while taking part in a protest by public transport workers. A video clip was posted on social media showing the police officers hurling insults at the conductor and assaulting him, kicking him and using their fists. Mr Shiba was left with injuries to his ear and his left arm. On 2 June, the Royal Eswatini Police Service decided to suspend the three officers, pending disciplinary proceedings against them.

Violent attacks on workers

Police used tear gas and batons to disperse a peaceful demonstration of government doctors in Islamabad, Pakistan, on 4 October 2021. About 20 doctors were detained until after the protest was dispersed. Several of the doctors were injured. The Young Doctors’ Association (YDA) had called on members from around the country to mobilise outside the Pakistan Medical Commission (PMC) in Islamabad against new regulations imposed on medical practices and to call on the government to improve the standard of education.

In a similar incident in Lahore on 29 August 2021, at least 12 members of the YDA suffered injuries when police resorted to baton charges and pepper spray to disperse a demonstration.

Violent attacks on workers

On 31 May 2021, staff from universities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistan, were violently attacked by heavily armed police as they marched to the Peshawar provincial assembly. The march was organised by the Federation of All Pakistan Academic Staff Association (FAPASA) to demand the reversal of government reforms forcing universities to generate their own finances. The police fired tear gas and used batons, leaving many protesters injured, with at least sixteen requiring hospital treatment. Twenty-four protesters, including the Peshawar University Teachers’ Association (PUTA) president, were arrested.

Violent attacks on workers

On 11 April 2021, unemployed teachers and health workers, who were protesting jointly under an Unemployed Sanjha Morcha banner in Patiala, India, were baton-charged by the police after they tried to cross the police line in order to reach the chief minister’s residence.

Violent attacks on workers

On 14 February 2022, Muhammad Al-Saidi, a member of the General Federation of Trade Unions of Workers in Iraq and a member of the General Union of Workers in the Oil and Gas Sector, was severely beaten during a peaceful demonstration in Dhi Qar, and several workers were unlawfully detained. Over the past year, strikes in oil and electricity sectors were systematically disrupted by security forces. Workers and trade union leaders have been repeatedly subjected to internal investigation procedures and disciplinary measures for their legitimate trade union activities. In some cases, they have been transferred to other companies or other positions and threatened with legal penalties.

Violent attacks on workers

On 7 September 2021, between 1,000 and 2,000 of migrant workers from Nepal and India employed by Nasser S. Al Hajri Corporation W.L.L (NSH), Gulf Asia Contracting LLC, and the Bahrain Petroleum Company (BAPCO) staged a week-long protest in Bahrain over poor working and living conditions after one of them suffered sunstroke and had to be hospitalised. The companies called the police and their own security personnel to retaliate against the strikers. Security personnel began to intimidate and harass the workers. Some workers were severely beaten, sustaining acute injuries, including bloody bruising. Public access to the workers’ camp, based in an isolated area in Sitra, had been denied since the protest began.

Violent attacks on workers

In May 2021, Algerian security forces cracked down on a sit-in organised by the National Committee for the Defense of the Rights of the Unemployed to demand jobs and employment assistance measures. Police used excessive force against protesting unemployed workers to disperse them, inuring some workers.

Murders

Working people were murdered in Italy and Kazakhstan.

Workers were murdered in Iraq.

Colombia was the deadliest country for trade union leaders in 2022.

Workers were murdered in Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala and Haiti.

Workers were murdered in Eswatini, Lesotho and South Africa.

Workers were murdered in Bangladesh, India, Myanmar and the Philippines.

Murders

On 14 May 2021, Felipe Andrés Pérez Pérez, union leader of SINALTRAINAL Seccional Envigado, was murdered in Medellín as he was coming back from a protest held in the framework of the national strike.

Murders

On the morning of 26 November 2021, Clemito Rengifo Salazar, a grassroots worker of the Sindicato de Maestros de Nariño (SIMANA), was carrying out his duties as an educator at the San Francisco de Asís Madrigal Educational Institution, in Policarpa (department of Nariño), when unidentified men abducted him from the school, in the presence of his students. His lifeless body was found later in the afternoon hours.

Murders

When the Kazakh people started organising peaceful protests for democracy and social justice in January 2022, the police and armed forces responded with extreme brutality, killing more than 160 people and arresting more than 8,000 people.

Murders

In Italy, thirty-seven-year old Adil Belakhdim was killed on 18 June 2021 in front of a Lidl distribution centre in Biandrate, northern Italy. He and 25 other logistics unionised workers were protesting at poor working conditions outside the entrance to a warehouse. A truck driver from a third-party supplier trying to leave the warehouse drove through a line of picketers blocking a gate. The vehicle struck Belakhdim and dragged him for several yards. Adil was killed, and two other protesters, also hit by the truck, suffered minor injuries.

Murders

Following a peaceful demonstration by the oil and gas workers in Dhi Qar, Iraq, on 14 February 2022, Ahmad Ali Al-Zaidi, a trade unionist and employee at an oil facility, was assassinated in retaliation for his activism during the demonstrations. Over the past year, strikes in oil and electricity sectors were systematically disrupted by security forces. Workers and trade union leaders have been repeatedly subjected to internal investigation procedures and disciplinary measures for their legitimate trade unions activities. In some cases, they have been transferred to other companies or other positions and threatened with legal penalties.

Murders

A journalist was killed and five workers were injured in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on 23 February 2022 when police opened fire on peaceful demonstrators opposing the amount of the meagre wage increase announced by the government following weeks of protest. The cost of living has been steadily increasing in Haiti and violence has pervaded the country as gangs often wielded more power than the government.

Murders

On 7 May 2021, Cinthia del Carmen Pineda Estrada, 35 years old, was fatally shot in front of her house in the Chaparro Zacapa neighbourhood (Guatemala). Estrada was a primary school teacher and leader of the Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Educación de Guatemala (STEG). The Public Prosecutor's Office has not provided any information on the perpetrators or the causes of this crime.

Murders

In Ecuador, Sandro Arteaga Quiroz, secretary of the Union of Workers of the Provincial Government of Manabí, was killed on 24 January 2022 on a highway as he was exiting his truck. Quiroz, who at the time of the attack was with one of his sons, was shot at least twice in the head by unidentified gunmen, who then fled the scene. The leader had received death threats via telephone a day before and until hours before the murder. The National Police carried out ground and air operations in search of the assassins. No arrests have been made so far.

Murders

This year, thirteen trade unionists were victims of targeted assassinations in Colombia.

On 11 August 2021, Carlos Fredy Londoño Bautista, a member of the Asociación de Educadores del Meta Adem-Fecode affiliate, was murdered as he was about to start his working day in Fuente de Oro, Meta. On the morning of 11 August, Carlos Freddy went to the school where he worked, and on the way he was approached by assassins on a motorcycle. They shot him four times in front of some of his students.

Murders

On 19 May 2021, Motselisi Manase, a woman factory worker, was fatally shot by police during protests over pay as violent clashes erupted between factory workers and police in Maseru, Lesotho. The strike started in mid-May 2021. Workers faced heavy repression from the police forces, who claimed that the strikers were “in contravention of Covid-19 regulations”. The police used water cannons and live rounds to disperse the strikers.

Murders

On 20 October 2021, Eswatini public sector and health workers marched to the Ministry of Justice to deliver a petition calling for a salary review, an end to the casualisation and privatisation of the public service and an end to attacks on trade unions. The protestors were met with tear gas and rubber bullets from police. Two buses ferrying public workers to the peaceful gathering were also stopped by the police and their passengers shot at with live bullets, and a student was killed by a stray bullet.

Murders

A bus driver was shot dead and another injured during clashes with police as drivers took part in a wage protest in the small town of Malkerns, Eswatini, on 13 October 2021. Further to the killing,transport workers joined in the wider protests in the country, calling for democratic reforms, and blocked several key roads across country. The following day, police shot and killed an individual at a roadblock in Mpaka town. On 20 October, security forces cracked down on protests in Mbabane and Manzini, killing one and injuring at least 80, including 30 by gunshot. The next day the government banned all protests and shut down the social media platform Facebook.

Murders

On 19 August 2021, Malibongwe Mdazo, a campaigner and organiser for the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), was assassinated in broad daylight at the office of the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) in Rustenburg. He was shot as he was exiting with a group of NUMSA members from the CCMA offices, in full view of the public. The hitmen fired at least ten bullets.

NUMSA officials were participating in conciliation at the CCMA as part of the verification process for NUMSA members at Newrack, one of the contract companies at Impala Platinum Holdings (Implats), which outsources most of its workforce in Rustenburg. Another NUMSA member and a member of the public were also shot and injured in the shooting.

Mdazo was among those who led the recent strike where the union was challenging contractors at Implats to grant organisational rights to NUMSA. Implats was notorious for its union-bashing attitude, which even led to the unilateral dismissal of all NUMSA’s interim committees.

Murders

By mid -September 2021, at least 27 trade unionists had been killed taking part in the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) protests against military rule in Myanmar. Twenty-one-year-old Zaw Zaw Htwe, a garment worker from Suntime JCK Company Limited and a member of Solidarity Trade Union (STUM) of Myanmar, was shot in the head by the security forces on 14 March during the protest in Shwe Pyi Thar. Chan Myae Kyaw, a dump truck driver at SinoHydro copper mine and a member of the Mining Workers’ Federation of Myanmar (MWFM), was shot multiple times and killed by soldiers on 27 March in a demonstration in Monywa. On 28-29 March, the military ambushed protesters in South Dagon Industrial Zone, killing Nay Lin Zaw, a union leader at AD Furniture (Wood Processing) and a member of Myanmar Industry Craft Service-Trade Unions Federation (MICS-TUsF).

Murders

At least eight people, including four farmers, were killed on 3 October 2021 when violence broke out in India’s Uttar Pradesh state. Two farmers were killed after a convoy of cars of the Home Ministry ran over a group of striking farmers. They were staging a demonstration on the road to protest against farm laws. In subsequent violence, two other farmers were killed by the police. Indian farmers had been protesting for over a year against the adoption of farm laws that will benefit corporations at the cost of millions of farmers. Police response became increasingly violent. In August 2021, in the northern Haryana state, one farmer was killed and ten others injured in police action during a protest against the farm laws.

Murders

Many garment workers were injured on 13 June 2021 following a police crackdown on strikes at Lenny Fashions and Lenny Apparels in the Dhaka export processing zone (DEPZ), Ashulia, Dhaka, Bangladesh. The workers were demanding their wages after the closure of the factory. Garment worker Jesmin Begum, thirty-two years old, suffered fatal injuries after she hit an iron pole while running away from the site of the protest as police violently dispersed the demonstrators. Many workers were injured when police fired rubber bullets, threw tear-gas shells, used water cannons and baton-charged protesting workers. Over 6,000 workers lost their jobs when Lenny Fashion and Lenny Apparels, a subsidiary of the Hong Kong-based Must Garment, closed on 20 January 2021. Management said it would pay unpaid wages by May, but the company never fulfilled its commitment.

Murders

At least five people were killed and dozens injured on 17 April 2021 after police opened fire on a crowd of workers protesting to demand unpaid wages and a pay rise at the SS Power Plant, a construction site of the coal-fired plant in the south-eastern city of Chittogram, Bangladesh. The workers were protesting over unpaid wages, unscheduled cuts in their working hours and for a Ramadan holiday and reduced hours during the religious festival.

Murders

In the Philippines, thirty-five-year old trade union leader Dandy Miguel, chairman of the PAMANTIK-Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU), was killed on 28 March 2021 in Calamba while on his way home on his motorcycle. Dandy Miguel was also president of Lakas ng Nagkakaisang Manggagawa ng Fuji Electric and a member of the National Council of KMU. Dandy Miguel was shot eight times by unknown assassins. Not long before he was murdered, Dandy had lodged a complaint with the Commission of Human Rights about the extrajudicial killings of nine labour and NGO activists on 7 March, also called Bloody Sunday, in Calabarzon. The Bloody Sunday killings happened after President Duterte openly called on security forces to gun down communists if they carried guns.

Workers clean the Museum of the Future in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates. Migrant workers in the country suffer severe and frequent labour abuse.Karim SAHIB / AFP

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