Pensions: the International Trade Union Confederation accuses France of “police brutality”

2023-06-30 08:30:18

“Police brutality”, “blind arrests”, “repeated” violations of workers’ rights… The management of the demonstrations against the pension reform in France is severely criticized this Friday by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), which brings together many unions in the world, including CFDT, CGT, FO and CFTC.

Faced with the challenge, the reaction of the French authorities gave rise to “police brutality, indiscriminate arrests and tear gas attacks”, lists the CSI in the latest edition of its Index of rights in the world, published this Friday. France is thus one of the 69 States, among the 149 studied by the main trade union confederation on the planet, to have carried out arrests and detentions deemed “arbitrary” between April 2022 and March 2023.

“When you want to change a law that concerns workers, and pension reform is an example, the least we can expect is dialogue,” Luc Triangle told AFP. But for the acting general secretary of the ITUC, “we have seen exactly the opposite in France” with unions “completely ignored”.

Record-breaking rights violations around the world

As in 2022, Paris is accused of “repeated” violations of workers’ rights, where Germany or the Scandinavian countries are only accused of “sporadic” violations. But the ranking of France remains comparatively advantageous. The United Kingdom is thus singled out for “systematic” violations of rights, in a world where 87% of States violate the right to strike.

Around the world, “while workers are bearing the full brunt of a historic cost of living crisis, governments are restricting the right to collectively bargain wage increases and to strike,” worries Luc Triangle. Violations of the main rights of global workers thus remain at “record levels”, the Confederation is alarmed.

The ITUC is particularly concerned about the situation in Ecuador and Tunisia, two states which feature on the annual list of the “ten worst countries for workers”. “In Tunisia, President Kais Saied is undermining the civil liberties of workers and undermining democratic institutions”, such as the Parliament dissolved in 2021, where the new Constitution “adopted in 2022 without consultation of political parties or social partners”.

A difficult situation in South America

“In Ecuador, large demonstrations in favor of democracy and collective rights, organized by organizations of indigenous peoples and trade unions, were violently repressed,” she laments. Conversely, Colombia and Brazil, where the presidency switched at the start of 2023 from the far right embodied by Jair Bolsonaro to the left represented by Lula, come out of the list of the ten worst countries.

The situation of workers in Latin America remains nonetheless catastrophic: 18 of the 19 trade unionists murdered around the world in 2022-2023 (two more than in 2021-2022) have lost their lives there. In Colombia alone, “15 trade unionists were victims of targeted assassinations between April and October 2022”, details the ITUC. No less than 86 people have also paid with their lives for their participation in strikes or demonstrations.

Companies in the sights

In addition to public authorities, the ITUC names and denounces, as every year, a series of large companies (or their local branches) “which have violated workers’ rights, are linked to a violation of these rights or have not used their influence to remedy it. ” Appear in particular in the list Amazon (United States), Apple (Australia), Deliveroo (Netherlands), Ikea (Poland), Ryanair (Spain), Starbucks (United States), Stellantis (Poland) or Uber ( The Netherlands).

With AFP