Every year, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC)—a global federation of unions—calls attention to workers rights by rating countries on a scale from 1 to 5 based on their record, with 1 being the best rating and 5 the worst. Each country is analyzed based on how well they comply with International Labour Organization conventions — international agreements that recognize workers rights and commit to protect them. Those rights include bans on forced labor and child labor, and the right to form unions and engage in collective bargaining.
There’s bad news: The global trend has been toward MORE workers rights violations in recent years.
According to the 2022 report, in the last year, workers experienced arbitrary arrests and detentions in 69 countries. Union leaders were prosecuted for strikes in Belarus, Egypt, India and the Philippines. Strikes to oppose military rule faced brutal repression in Sudan and Myanmar. Guatemala continued to be the site of endemic anti-union violence, along with impunity for the perpetrators. And trade unionists were killed in 13 countries: Bangladesh, Colombia, Ecuador, Eswatini, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Iraq, Italy, Lesotho, Myanmar, the Philippines and South Africa.
Here’s a partial list of how countries were ranked by ITUC:
Nine countries were rated the best in the world for workers rights—rated “1”— with only “sporadic” rights violations: Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Germany, Austria, Italy, and Ireland.
Next best, rated 2, “repeated violations of rights” are 27 countries, including Japan, New Zealand, France, Spain, Portugal, Israel, but also Congo, Ghana, Malawi, and Namibia.
Rated 3, for “regular violations of rights” were 29 countries, including Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom, Belgium, Poland, South Africa, Argentina, Bolivia, and El Salvador.
The United States? Sorry. It’s rated 4, “systematic violations of rights” along with 38 other countries, including Venezuela, Vietnam, Peru, Australia, Chile, Greece, Saudi Arabia, and much of Africa.
Only 44 countries were worse, rated 5, including Somalia, Libya, Syria, Turkey, Guatemala, Bangladesh, Brazil, Philippines.
THE 9 BEST COUNTRIES FOR WORKERS
- Sweden
- Norway
- Finland
- Denmark
- Iceland
- Germany
- Austria
- Italy
- Ireland
THE 10 WORST COUNTRIES FOR WORKERS
- Bangladesh
- Belarus
- Brazil
- Colombia
- Egypt
- Eswatini
- Guatemala
- Myanmar
- Philippines
- Turkey
MORE: See ITUC’s 62-page report at https://www.globalrightsindex.org/en/2022
Italy? Really? It is literally the worst country for working in the western world, awful and shitty salaries, huge violations of workers’rights, like working for 10 hours per day, huge discrimination on ethnic or RELIGOUs background, as well as no jobs opportunities,no meritocracy, this especially applies to the southern regions
The rest of the world noting the US’s SYSTEMIC issues while the country itself desperately tries to hold on to its own delusions of being an equal opportunity nation is beyond irony. One can only laugh at this point.
In Italy, James, workers must have a contract with their employers to guarantee a living wage. Vacation, health care, other benefits are paid for by taxes that workers can afford to pay…because they get a living wage. It’s not a welfare state because it isn’t free. The workers can afford to pay for it. As for “meritocracy”… you think that merit, and not connections and familial wealth determines who gets the best jobs in America , or the best educations? If you do, you are naive.