Workers in nine out of 10 countries have seen their right to strike violated over the past year as they battle the worst cost-of-living crisis in decades, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) warned on June 30.



A decade after launching its first annual Global Rights Index, the ITUC said the results for 2023 provided "a sobering confirmation of its founding purpose."

Eighty-seven percent of the 149 countries reviewed in the index violated the right to strike between April 2022 and March 2023, the union group said.

Seventy-nine percent of countries violated the right to collective bargaining, with companies for instance refusing to comply with collective agreements or rejecting established trade unions, it added.

"As workers have felt the full force of a cost-of-living crisis, governments have cracked down on their rights to collectively negotiate wage rises and take strike action against employer and government indifference to the impacts of spiraling inflation upon working people," the union group said in a report.

Ecuador and Tunisia were highlighted by the IUTC, joining its list of the 10 worst countries for workers in 2023.

Mass protests in Ecuador for democracy and collective rights were brutally repressed, it said.