The State Of Global Workers’ Rights

It’s been 10 years since the Rana Plaza factory collapse in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka, where more than 1,100 people died and over 2,600 were injured.

Known as the clothing industry’s deadliest disaster, the event triggered a global response with pressure from the international community to scrutinize the health and safety procedures of the fashion and textiles industry. It led to the swift implementation of the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, which gave unions greater power and has provided a framework to hold fashion brands accountable for the welfare of their factory employees.

Rolled out in 2013, the accord was considered a major step forwards for workers rights, with more than 220 brands pledging to join it. In August 2021, brands and unions agreed on a new International Accord, which is intended to allow for the expansion of the agreement’s work to other countries.

While certainly a move in the right direction, Statista’s Anna Fleck reports that campaigners stress that a lot of work is still to be done. For example, according to the Clean Clothes Campaign, several household names have failed to sign the new treaty, including the likes of Amazon, Levi’s, IKEA and Walmart.

The following chart zooms out to give an overview of the state of workers’ rights around the world, using data compiled by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). According to their analysis, Bangladesh was rated in the lowest category for workers rights by to the International Trade Union Confederation (save for places where a general breakdown of the rule of law was identified). The organization also said it saw the country towards the bottom of that category, together with Belarus, Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, Eswatini, the Philippines, Guatemala, Myanmar and Turkey. The ITUC ranked 148 countries based on the right to freedom of association, the right to collective bargaining and the right to strike, giving each nation a score of 1-5+, where 1=sporadic violations of rights and 5+=no guarantee of rights due to breakdown of the rule of law.

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As this infographic shows, only a few select countries received the green mark of approval – all of which are in Europe. The rest of the world shows a less hopeful picture, with 87 percent of countries having violated their workers’ right to strike in 2022, up from 63 percent in 2014. According to the report, trade unionists were murdered in 13 countries last year, with Colombia the deadliest nation.

Last year, the Middle East and North Africa received the worst score of the regions on the Global Rights Index with an average of 4.53. It was followed by the Asia-Pacific with 4.22, Africa with 3.76, the Americas with 3.52 and Europe with 2.49. The Asia-Pacific region saw its average rating worsen slightly in 2021 from 4.17 to 4.22 the following year.

While the chart considers not only garment workers but all workers generally, ITUC analysts explain that in Bangladesh, the garment industry is one of the biggest sectors, employing more than 4.5 million people. The country received a score of 5, signifying that there is no guarantee of rights to workers.

According to the report, workers experienced violence in 43 percent of countries in the Asia-Pacific region, up from 35 percent in 2021. In Bangladesh, workers strikes were met with brutality by the authorities, with at least five killed, while attempts at forming unions were shut down. India and Pakistan too saw police brutality against workers, while authorities in Hong Kong clamped down on trade unions and pro-democracy organizations and human rights abuses continued in Myanmar. In China, persecuted minorities were detained by the authorities and coerced into forced labor to fuel the garment industry.

The ITUC sends questionnaires to national unions around the world to report violations of workers’ rights. These are recorded each year from April to March and verified. Each country is then analyzed against 97 indicators based on ILO conventions and jurisprudence to create an index reflecting violations of workers’ rights in law and practice.