Foreword This year marks the 10th edition of the Global Rights Index, and the 2023 results provide a sobering confirmation of its founding purpose. Across both high-income and lowincome countries, as workers have felt the full force of a cost-of-living crisis, governments have cracked down on their rights to collectively negotiate wage rises and take strike action against employer and government indifference to the impacts of spiralling inflation upon working people. From Eswatini to Myanmar, Peru to France, Iran to Korea, workers’ demands to have their labour rights upheld have been ignored and their dissent has been met with increasingly brutal responses from state forces.
As working people were forced to demand better pay by the worst cost-of-living crisis in decades, 9 out of 10 countries violated their right to strike. As they sought representative structures to put their grievances to employers, 8 out of 10 countries violated their right to collective bargaining. With nearly half of the countries surveyed violating the right to civil liberties, the foundations and pillars of democracy are under attack. The link between workers’ rights being upheld and the strength of a democracy cannot be overstated. The erosion of one amounts to the degradation of the other. Our democracies are under attack.
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2023 ITUC GLOBAL RIGHTS INDEX
