Right wing populism has sprung from the inevitable failure of neo-liberalism

Abstract

18 | International Union Rights | 27/1-27/2 FOCUS | RIGHT-WING POPULISM, TRADE UNIONS, AND FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHTS In the run-up to the 10th anniversary of the Mandate for the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Associatio, and in preparation for the Rapporteur’s thematic report to the Human Rights Council at its 44th session, a call for inputs was issued, seeking contributions ‘reflecting on the past decade and setting a vision for the mandate’s future agenda’. On behalf of ICTUR, Daniel Blackburn and Ciaran Cross submitted this reflection on the alarming global rise of the populist right and the implications for trade unions and for fundamental human rights. The past decade has been marked by the reverberations of the 2008 global financial crisis. In every corner of the world, the full brunt of the excesses fostered by forty years of neoliberal policies have been deeply felt: across the globe, workers have borne the cost of measures imposed to stabilise the financial system’s inevitable collapse. As early as Sept. 2008, European trade union leaders adopted the London Declaration, stressing that the crisis arose from ‘greed and recklessness in Wall Street, London, and other financial centres’1. Heedless, desperate governments bailed out banks and socialised their vast losses. Spurred on by international financial institutions (IFIs), many states imposed new strictures of neoliberal reform of the name of competition, efficiency and growth: a wave of ‘austerity’ measures accompanied by labour law ‘reforms’ designed to curtail trade union rights, dismantle long-established collective bargaining institutions and decentralise bargaining structures, limit the right to strike and criminalise trade union activities. European institutions weighed in to require economic and labour market reforms in EU member states, to similar effect. Between 2010 and 2015, austerity-driven labour law reforms were implemented in 89 countries and some 130 governments had implemented or planned publicsector job-cuts and wage restraints2. The 2010s have seen unprecedented levels of social unrest. In the absence of meaningful and effective avenues for social dialogue, workers across the world sought – as they always have done – to articulate their grievances through demonstrations and protests. Where legal reform proved insufficient to stifle workers’ voice, governments resorted to often-lethal force, deploying riot police and security forces to suppress popular dissent. These incidents involve a startling increase in the severity of violence reported in many countries, including in Bangladesh and the Philippines, where violence was frequently reported, and shooting incidents in several European countries (in one case, in Italy, a trade union activist was shot dead), continuing severe anti-union violence in Colombia, Mexico, and Guatemala, and cases of the utmost severity in Kazakhstan and South Africa. These cases paint a damning picture of the state of freedom of association and freedom of assembly rights in 2020, which we have condemned in the strongest terms, writing to relevant authorities in support of victims, and demanding they open thorough and independent investigations, calling for the prosecution of perpetrators, and for the provision of remedies to those impacted. In this context, the rise of populist, nationalist governments seeking to co-opt a widespread sense of powerlessness against the tides of economic globalisation is alarming. It is to this forbidding environment that we urge the Special Rapporteur to direct his attention and efforts in this review of the mandate and in planning its future activities. Our global economic and political systems are treading a path comparable to the trajectory of the last century. Indeed, while the 100th anniversary of the International Labour Organisation in 2019 should have been cause for celebration, it also served as a potent reminder of the conditions into which the ILO was born. A watershed moment born of a global desire to rebuild a better world, the ILO was founded around the idea that ‘universal and lasting peace can be established only if it is based upon social justice’ and that ‘the failure of any nation to adopt humane conditions of labour is an obstacle in the way of other nations which desire to improve the conditions in their own countries’3. Less than a decade had passed from the ILO’s founding before...