US watchdog report ranks Guyana labour as “mostly free”

Sep 02, 2010 News

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– beats out lowly Cuba, Venezuela, ties with US

A US-based independent watchdog body has cited major threats to workers’ rights across the globe, with Guyana being ranked as a “mostly free” country alongside the US, Trinidad and Brazil, and beating out “repressive” Venezuela and a “very repressive” Cuba in the Americas.
The Freedom House report, released Monday, found that the rights of working people and trade unions were under serious duress throughout much of the world, and that authoritarian regimes are using increasingly sophisticated methods of control. The report, The Global State of Workers’ Rights: Free Labor in a Hostile World, also stated that one-third of the global population lives in societies in which workers’ rights suffer a significant degree of repression.
On the 0-4 scale, the ratings were Free-4; Mostly Free-3; Partly Free-2; Repressive-1 and Very Repressive-0.
Freedom House is an independent watchdog organization that supports democratic change, monitors the status of freedom around the world, and advocates for democracy and human rights.
In the Americas, along with Guyana were neighbouring Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Argentina and Bolivia.
While Cuba ranked the worst at “0”; Colombia and Cuba each at 1; Barbados, the Bahamas, Canada and Chile were high in the ratings for their policies ranking them at 4. The report, which examines the global state of worker and trade union rights for the year 2009, outlines serious and systematic violations of internationally recognized labour norms in every part of the world, except Western Europe.
The United States was ranked as Mostly Free, trailing Western Europe, Canada, Australia and a number of developing countries.  The report noted that while American law guarantees workers core labour rights, the overall political environment in the U.S. is distinctly hostile to unions, collective bargaining and labour protest, and has encouraged growing resistance to unions by employers. Management has used a variety of tactics to forestall unionization and has shown a willingness to violate labour law if it would result in the defeat of a campaign to gain bargaining recognition for a union.
The most serious problems were found in the Middle East and former Soviet Union, with major problems also noted in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.  For example, in the former Soviet Republic of Belarus, the Trade Union Law of January 2000 and subsequent presidential decrees create an atmosphere in which independent trade unions face harassment, while their leaders are frequently arrested and prosecuted for peaceful protests and dismissed from employment. In Saudi Arabia trade unions are banned outright.
Arch Puddington, director of research at Freedom House and editor of the workers’ rights report, pointed to the growing sophistication of the techniques of control by authoritarian regimes as an especially troubling development.
“Under the old authoritarian model, any initiative outside the realm of the party-state was impermissible,” Puddington said.  “Modern authoritarians have developed methods of workplace control that are more nuanced and flexible, and in a sense more insidious than the more direct and brutal methods of the past.”
The study assesses the state of workers’ rights both globally and on a regional basis. Data for the analysis are drawn from Freedom in the World 2010, the latest edition of Freedom House’s annual report on political rights and civil liberties, covering developments in 2009. A total of 165 countries are included, constituting all those with modern economies and significant trade union movements. Narrative reports are provided for 50 of these countries.
Among the more disturbing findings is that 40 countries, or nearly one-quarter of those assessed, were judged to have either Repressive or Very Repressive labour rights environments. At the other end of the spectrum, 41 countries, or almost one quarter, were found to have “Free” labour rights environments. Of these, 26 were European Union member states.
Of the 14 countries ranked as Very Repressive, three—Belarus, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan—are in the former Soviet Union; four—Burma, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam—are in Asia; three—Libya, Saudi Arabia and Syria—are in the Middle East; three—Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, and Sudan—are in sub-Saharan Africa; and one—Cuba—is in the Americas. Among the countries designated as Repressive are China, Egypt, Iran, Singapore, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.
Another significant finding was that some governments have adopted laws barring local unions from accepting foreign financial assistance, a potentially significant restriction given the long history of European and especially American union support for workers’ struggles in developing countries and authoritarian settings.

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