France was sharply singled out on Friday June 30 by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) for its muscular response to the protest against the pension reform, in a world where violations of workers’ rights remain “at record levels”.

Protests against raising the retirement age to 64 “have resulted in police brutality, indiscriminate arrests and tear gas attacks”, lists the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) in the latest edition of its Global Rights Index, finalized ahead of recent urban riots sparked in France by the death of a teenager killed by a police officer on Tuesday.

France is thus one of the 69 States, among the 149 studied by the main trade union confederation on the planet, to have carried out arrests and detentions deemed “arbitrary” between April 2022 and March 2023. As in 2022, Paris is accused of “repeated” violations of workers’ rights, where Germany or the Scandinavian countries are only blamed for “sporadic” violations.

Everywhere in the world, rights are violated

“When you want to change a law that affects workers, and pension reform is an example, the least we can expect is dialogue,” Luc Triangle told Agence France-Presse (AFP). But for the Acting General Secretary of the ITUC, “we have seen exactly the opposite in France” with unions “completely ignored”.

But the ranking of France remains comparatively advantageous. The United Kingdom is thus singled out for “systematic” violations of rights, in a world where 87% of States violate the right to strike. Around the world, “as workers bear the brunt of a historic cost of living crisis and an inflationary spiral resulting from corporate greed, governments are restricting the right to collectively bargain wage increases and to strike,” worries Luc Triangle.

Freedom of expression, assembly or association, social dialogue: violations of the main rights of global workers remain at “record levels”, alarms the Confederation, which claims 338 affiliated unions, established in 168 countries and territories .

Large companies also pinned down

The ITUC is particularly concerned about the situation in Ecuador and Tunisia, two states which make the annual list of the “ten worst countries for workers”. “In Ecuador, large demonstrations in favor of democracy and collective rights, organized by indigenous peoples’ organizations and trade unions, were violently repressed,” she said.

“In Tunisia, President Kaïs Saïed is undermining the civil liberties of workers and undermining democratic institutions”, such as the Parliament dissolved in 2021, or the new Constitution “adopted in 2022 without consultation of political parties or social partners”.

Conversely, Colombia and Brazil, where the presidency switched at the beginning of 2023 from the far right embodied by Jair Bolsonaro to the left represented by Lula, come out of the list of the ten worst countries. The situation of workers in Latin America remains nonetheless catastrophic: 18 of the 19 trade unionists murdered worldwide in 2022-2023 (two more than in 2021-2022) lost their lives there.

In Colombia alone, “15 trade unionists were victims of targeted assassinations between April and October 2022″, details the ITUC to AFP. No less than 86 people have also paid with their lives for their participation in strikes or demonstrations. “Generally, in 2022-2023, (…) strikes and union-sponsored protests against the rising cost of living were met with greater police brutality, even in countries generally less prone to police violence”, warns the Confederation.

In addition to public authorities, the ITUC names and denounces as every year a series of large companies (or their local branches) “that have violated the rights of workers, are linked to a violation of these rights or have not made use of their influence to remedy it. ” Appear in particular in the list Amazon (United States), Apple (Australia), Deliveroo (Netherlands), Ikea (Poland), Ryanair (Spain), Starbucks (United States), Stellantis (Poland) or even Uber ( The Netherlands).