The latest survey of workers’ rights around the world shows that the Commonwealth is doing slightly better than treading water as other countries sink further. And there are some signs of improvement already underway – against a background described as “a worsening global crisis” and compared with the decline in workers’ rights identified in the same survey last year.
June 2 was the opening day of the annual International Labour Conference, where representatives from the 187 governments, trade unions and employers’ organisations in the UN’s workplace agency the ILO meet in Geneva for two weeks. It also marked the launch of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) annual survey of workers’ rights around the world, the Global Rights Index 2025.
Based on reports from 151 ILO member states, including 35 Commonwealth countries, the ITUC survey makes for grim reading, reflecting a growing authoritarianism that feeds off and promotes attacks on trade unions. The global trade union movement’s response – a campaign ‘For Democracy that Delivers’ – seeks to challenge the impact of billionaire power over governments.
The situation reported in those 35 Commonwealth countries is far from perfect, but shows some signs of improvement, certainly compared with the rest of the world. Only Europe – and the situation there is getting worse too – now outscores the Commonwealth on workers’ rights, and the worst region in the world – the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) – is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the only region without a Commonwealth country.
The Global Rights Index assesses countries’ performance against 96 indicators based on international regulations and standards (set out in detail in the annual report), giving each country a score from 1 to 5 (and a worse category of 5+ for the 12 countries where there is no guarantee of rights due to the breakdown of law – thankfully, none of them members of the Commonwealth.)
Overall, the Commonwealth country average is 3.54, falling between regular and systematic violations of rights. Despite a decline over the past decade, Europe still scores 2.78 but every other region is now below the Commonwealth, including the Americas (3.68), Africa (3.95), Asia Pacific (4.08) and MENA (4.68).
The Commonwealth’s marginal improvement since 2024 (up from 3.56 to 3.54) is mostly down to Australia’s recently re-elected Labor government’s worker protection legal reforms. It’s likely that UK legislation currently before Parliament and the renewal of democracy in Gabon (where a trade unionist, Patrick Barbera Isaac, was last month appointed the new Minister for Employment) will see further positive change in the future. Indeed, of the four countries singled out in the ITUC survey as having unions “pushing back”, three are in the Commonwealth: Canada, the new Secretary-General’s home state of Ghana, and Mauritius. Just 17% of Commonwealth countries covered by the survey are in categories 5 and 5+ (compared with over a third of non-Commonwealth countries).
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But, as the ILO conference agenda shows, Commonwealth countries still have improvements to make. A dozen of the 40 countries on the ‘long list’ of cases put forward by employers’ and workers’ organisations for consideration for debate at the conference’s Committee on the Application of Standards which polices adherence to the ILO’s conventions on workers’ rights – the laws that the ILO’s member states have agreed multilaterally to be bound by – are from Commonwealth countries. They range from eSwatini to Zambia and cover breaches of conventions on maternity arrangements (Ghana), tripartite social dialogue and workplace inspection (eSwatini, Pakistan and Togo), freedom of association (Malaysia, New Zealand and Nigeria), child and forced labour (Sri Lanka, UK, Tanzania and Zambia) and discrimination at work (India).
And the Global Rights Index, while not identifying any Commonwealth countries in the 5+ category, does categorise Bangladesh, eSwatini, India, Malaysia, Nigeria and Pakistan as having “no guarantee of rights”, with Bangladesh, eSwatini and – for the first time in the 11 years of the survey – Nigeria identified as among the ten worst places in the world to be a trade unionist.
Bangladesh and eSwatini retained their places in that list of shame due to the particularly violent repression of trade union activity and frequent arrests of trade unionists simply for doing their jobs. They were not alone in this (trade unionists were killed leading protests by police in Cameroon and by private security guards in South Africa this year), just the worst performers. Nigeria entered the list because of the turn to authoritarianism, with state security raids on the headquarters of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the detention – ironically as he was about to fly to the UK to address last September’s conference of the British Trades Union Congress – of the NLC’s President, Joe Ajaero.
The best performing Commonwealth countries, according to the ITUC survey, were Australia, Barbados, Ghana, Malawi, New Zealand and Singapore, although even those countries saw “repeated violations of rights”. No Commonwealth country appeared in the top category, which features just seven countries, all in Europe.
The Commonwealth Trade Union Group, which holds its annual meeting (also in Geneva) on June 9, will consider the survey’s findings, and is likely to continue its call for the Commonwealth to boost adherence to ILO conventions and workers’ rights, including through re-establishing the annual Commonwealth Labour and Employment Ministers Meetings which fell into abeyance in the 1990s. The group will also consider proposals to push Commonwealth governments to seek to raise their ratings in future editions of the ITUC Global Rights Index.
Not for the first time this year, the Commonwealth is being asked to step up against a background of extreme, authoritarian and undemocratic developments around the globe.
Owen Tudor is the Secretary of the Commonwealth Trade Union Group and a member of the Round Table editorial board.
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