United Nations Special Rapporteur Maina Kiai will appear before the 71st Session of the UN General Assembly today, (October 20), to present his final report on the study examining the exercise of assembly and association rights in the workplace.
Kiai’s report scrutinizes the exercise and enjoyment of assembly and association rights in the context of labour, with a focus on the most marginalized workers, including global supply chain workers, informal workers, migrant workers, domestic workers and others.
Although labour rights are sometimes seen as distinct from more general human rights, Kiai, who has served as the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association since 2011, emphasizes at the outset of the report that this thinking is false.
He argues that the freedom of peaceful assembly and of association are the foundation for the exercise of all labour rights, since they are the vehicle that protects workers’ ability to meet, organize and have a collective voice.
“Labour rights are human rights, and the ability to exercise these rights in the workplace is prerequisite for workers to enjoy a broad range of other rights, whether economic, social, cultural, political or otherwise,” Kiai writes in the report.
Although States are obligated under international law to respect, protect and fulfill workers’ assembly and association rights, the report paints a grim picture of what is happening in practice.
The Special Rapporteur cites dozens of examples of rights violations in more than 50 countries, ranging from union busting to legislative gaps to assassinations of union leaders.
The implications of States’ failure to protect workers’ rights are grave, Kiai notes, since weakened labour rights can exacerbate problems such as global inequality, poverty, violence, child and forced labour, and directly contribute to problems such as human trafficking and slavery.
The report concludes with extensive recommendations to States, the International Labour Organization (ILO), businesses and civil society on how to promote improved respect for workers’ assembly and association rights.
“The global attack on labour rights has made it disturbingly clear that the old ways of defending workers’ rights are no longer working,” Kiai writes.
“Our world and its globalized economy are changing at a lightning pace, and it is critical that the tools we use to protect to labour rights adapt just as quickly. A first step towards this goal is to obliterate the antiquated and artificial distinction between labour rights and human rights generally.”