In almost 60 percent of countries, workers – including teachers - are excluded from fundamental labour rights, said Sharan Burrow, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) when addressing EI’s 7th World Congress in Ottawa, Canada, on 26 July.
The ITUC represents 148 million workers in 150 countries.
The arrests and murder of trade unionists has increased, she said, and union rights have declined, with austerity the driver of this decline in Europe in particular. “The fundamental freedoms of peaceful demonstration, free education, social protection are slipping away in many parts of the world,” she said. This is not helped by anti-union legislation in the United Kingdom and Canada and the delegalisation of a teachers’ union in Korea.
In addition, corporatisation has spread to education. “The spread of for-profit schools has no place in a just world,” said Burrow. “When you look at Ghana, where a child is forced to work to pay their fees for school, this is not acceptable on our watch. Every child has a right to free universal quality education.”
Photo Credit: Gabriel Castro - IEAL