NUPGE Takes Labour Rights Fight to UN Human Rights Council
Sep 09, 2008
The 340,000-member National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) is urging the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) to take into account serious, long-standing violations of Canadian workers’ basic rights as it begins an assessment of Canada’s human rights record.
The HRC is responsible for promoting universal respect for the protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all. One of the key elements of the Council’s work is to review every member country of the UN to ensure they are fulfilling human rights obligations and commitments. In February 2009 the Council will be assessing Canada’s woeful record.
In a submission to the council, NUPGE argues that all Canadian workers, indeed all workers everywhere, have a fundamental human right to organize unions and to collectively bargain their conditions of employment.
In fact, the International Labour Organization (ILO), another specialized UN agency, has developed various conventions and procedures that enshrine union organizing and collective bargaining as international labour standards and ensure that these rights are respected in practice around the world.
However, NUPGE says the HRC should be deeply concerned that, rather than honouring international labour standards and workers’ basic rights, successive Canadian governments have blatantly and repeatedly violated them.
’Serious erosion’
“Freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining are well established as fundamental human rights, yet Canadians have seen a serious erosion of these rights over the past 26 years," NUPGE advises the council.
"Since 1982, almost every jurisdiction in Canada has experienced a major violation of the bargaining rights of its citizens," the union’s submission says.
“Restrictions have been placed on the right of unions to organize. Collective agreements have been torn up. Freely negotiated wages and benefits have been taken away. Employers’ proposals have been legislatively imposed on workers and the right to strike removed," it notes.
“Canada’s rhetoric at the UN on labour rights has not been matched by action at home. Of the ILO’s 188 Conventions, Canada has only ratified 30. Canada has only ratified three of the 30 ILO Conventions developed since 1982. Canada has ratified only five of the eight ILO core Conventions. Since 1982, Canada’s record with respect to the number of complaints submitted to the ILO’s Freedom of Association Committee is the worst of any of the ILO’s 183 Member States with unions in Canada filing more complaints than the national labour movements of any other country.”
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