Today (7 October) is World Day for Decent Work. Decent work is what trade unions fight for every day; job creation and protection, rights at work, social protection and social dialogue.
For us, they are the building blocks of an economy that puts people first, but all over the world they are being eroded in the name of austerity.
So today, trade unions across the globe are standing together to mark World Day for Decent Work by demanding an end to corporate greed.
In South Africa, unions are campaigning against job losses and in the Czech Republic, they are calling for an end to cheap labour.
Here, we are campaigning against the government’s Trade Union Bill, which threatens to restrict workers’ right to strike and freedom of association.
These might seem like different struggles, but whether it’s the erosion of labour laws, job security, pensions or pay, it’s all being driven by one thing – corporate greed.
The Decent Work Agenda was launched by the United Nations’ International Labour Organisation (ILO) in 1999. It reflects the ILO core conventions, the basic fundamental agreements on workers rights that the UK – like countries all over the world – have signed into law.
These core conventions protect the right of workers to associate freely and bargain collectively. They ban forced, compulsory and child labour; prohibit discrimination and protect equal pay. To workers they offer essential protection, but for those who ideologically believe that labour is a commodity and that workers’ rights stand in the way of a good profit, the ILO conventions are just red tape.
The right to strike is protected under the ILO convention on freedom of association and the right to organise, which Britain was the first country in the world to ratify in 1946.
It is this ultimate sanction – the right for workers to withdraw their labour, which protects every other right. When the right to strike is weakened, the ability of working people to stand up for their rights is weakened too.
In the UK, the right to strike is already highly regulated, but the government’s Trade Union Bill goes much further, proposing a new set of restrictions that test the ILO conventions to their limits.
The proposed measures on strike ballots, including restrictions on turnout, are clear violations of the articles on freedom of association, as they make it extremely difficult for workers to exercise their right to strike.
The government’s proposed catch-all list of ‘important public services’ is significantly broader than the ILO’s definition of ‘essential services’ and will restrict the rights of tens of thousands of people in both the public and private sectors.
The Trade Union Bill not only drives a coach and horses through the ILO convention on freedom of association and the right to organise, but by weakening the right to strike and attempting to bury unions in piles of pointless bureaucracy, it will undermine many of the other core conventions too.
Decent work relies on the will of governments to respect international labour standards and the right of workers to organise and stand up to employers when their rights are under threat. By seeking to undermine these two things, the Trade Union Bill can only result in more dangerous, low-paid and precarious jobs.
UNISON will mobilise like never before to stop the Bill and make the case for the positive role trade unions play in the workplace.
Join our campaign here. It’s a fight we can and must win and, when we do, it will be a major win for decent work.