No guarantee of rights for workers in Belarus, latest ITUC Global Rights Index informs

The ITUC Global Rights Index rates countries from one to five, placing Belarus together with Bangladesh and Qatar.

Belarus gets rating 5, which stands for “the worst countries in the world to work in”, new ITUC Global Rights Index prepared within the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and released on May 19 in Berlin says.

“While the legislation may spell out certain rights workers have effectively no access to these rights and are therefore exposed to autocratic regimes and unfair labour practices”, is said in the description to the rating given to our country according to 97 internationally recognized indicators.

24 countries including Belarus were rated as countries with “no guarantee of rights” for workers. The list features Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, and Turkey.

Eight more countries showed no guarantee of rights due to breakdown of the rule of law. These include the Central African Republic, Libya, Palestine, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, and Ukraine.

At a time when corporate power has never been greater, these results show that almost every country can improve its treatment of workers, conclude the researchers, adding that the ITUC Global Poll 2014 found almost two-thirds of people want governments to do more to tame corporate power.

You can read the whole index here.