Global trends for workers in 2023

1. Democracy in crisis

The Global Rights Index has tracked the key elements of workplace democracy for 10 years, including the right to establish and join a trade union, the right to collective bargaining and the right to strike as well as the right to free speech and assembly, which symbolises a healthy democracy.

The systematic dismantling of the building blocks of freedom and democracy is taking place through sustained attacks on workers’ rights and workplace democracy through restrictions on the right to strike, free speech and assembly.

In the past 10 editions, the Global Rights Index has recorded an unprecedented increase in attacks on free speech and assembly from 26% of countries in 2014 to 42% of countries in 2023.

42%

42% of countries restricted free speech and assembly.

Countries where freedom of speech and assembly were denied or constrained increased from 26% of countries in 2014 to 42% of countries in 2023.

10-year trends: The dismantling of workplace democracy

2. Silencing the age of anger

Workers are under pressure as prices spiral and wages stagnate. Private companies disproportionately inflate prices, using global shocks as a smokescreen to obscure their greed for profits. Meanwhile, employers and governments continue to hold wages down by arguing that a wage-price spiral must be avoided at all costs.

Workers on the frontlines

As workers unite in collective actions to call for higher wages and a fairer redistribution of profits, their protests are often suppressed by authorities, who resort to excessive brutality to crackdown on strikers or use illegal orders to prevent workers from gathering.

In Bangladesh, working people continued to demand their rights, despite being subjected to police brutality and worker intimidation. The country is one of several that exemplified the trend of deploying violence to silence workers.

In South Africa, Pakistan and Bangladesh, workers’ calls for fair wages were met with police violence that included rubber bullets being used against protestors. In Brazil, Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, Cambodia and Lesotho, worker’s rights to protest were curtailed by legislation or the deployment of state forces.