For more than a decade, the International Trade Union Confederation’s (ITUC) Global Rights Index has documented the deterioration of workers’ rights around the world. Each year brings new records for attacks on unions, restrictions on collective bargaining and governments willing to intervene on behalf of employers.
The ITUC’s 2026 report shows those trends are not slowing: they are accelerating. The report describes what it calls a “billionaire coup against democracy,” arguing that governments are increasingly reshaping labour law to favour corporate power while restricting the ability of workers to organize and strike.
For Canadian workers, the report arrives at an especially important moment. Just weeks after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivered a landmark opinion affirming that the right to strike is protected under international law, the federal government is exploring new ways to limit that same right at home.
The contradiction is stark. As international institutions reaffirm that striking is a fundamental democratic freedom, governments around the world — including Canada’s — are searching for ways to undermine it.
Workers’ Rights Are Under Attacks
The ITUC’s report paints a bleak picture. In no part of the world are workers’ rights being adequately protected.
Violations of the right to strike were documented in 87 per cent of countries surveyed. Eighty per cent of countries restricted collective bargaining. Three-quarters denied or impeded workers’ ability to form or join unions. Half of all countries arrested or detained workers for exercising their rights — a record high. Attacks on freedom of speech and assembly also reached their highest level since the index began.
These are not isolated abuses occurring only under authoritarian governments. The report argues that democratic governments are increasingly adopting legal restrictions that weaken organized labour while expanding employer power. North America is not immune.
The United States continues to receive one of the poorest ratings among advanced industrial economies. The Donald Trump administration has accelerated this trend. While union organizing has increased in recent years, and the National Labor Relations Board was more worker-friendly during the Biden era, workers continue to face aggressive anti-union campaigns, widespread employer retaliation, permanent replacement of strikers in many jurisdictions, and weak labour law enforcement.
Although Canada performs considerably better than the U.S., the report still assigns the country a rating indicating “regular violations of rights.” The ITUC index points to continued government intervention in collective bargaining, restrictions on strikes in federally regulated sectors and recurring use of back-to-work legislation and other interference as evidence that fundamental labour rights remain vulnerable in Canada.
The pattern extends across Europe as well.
Although Northern Europe continues to rank among the strongest performers globally when it comes to the protection of workers’ rights, the report notes growing attacks elsewhere on the continent. Governments have imposed emergency restrictions on strikes, weakened collective bargaining institutions and introduced legislation limiting industrial action in sectors deemed economically or politically sensitive. Even countries with long traditions of “social dialogue” have experienced growing pressure to curb workers’ bargaining power.
The overall picture is one of gradual democratic backsliding. Rather than openly banning unions, many governments are narrowing the circumstances under which workers can effectively exercise their rights. Collective bargaining formally remains legal, and even encouraged, but employers are given far more opportunities to avoid or circumvent it. The right to strike in most cases exists on paper, but governments disregard it whenever workers wield sufficient leverage to disrupt business as usual.
The ICJ Reaffirms The Right To Strike
Against this troubling backdrop, the ICJ recently delivered one of the most significant labour law decisions in years.
In May, the Court issued an advisory opinion confirming that the right to strike is protected under International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention No. 87 on “freedom of association and protection of the right to organise.” The opinion settles a dispute that had persisted within the ILO for more than a decade after employer organizations challenged the longstanding interpretation that Convention 87 implicitly protects strike action.
The ICJ concluded by a vote of 10 to four that workers’ organizations cannot meaningfully exercise freedom of association without the ability to strike. Although Convention 87 does not explicitly mention strikes, the judges held that the Convention guarantees allowing unions to defend workers’ interests through the withdrawal of labour.
The ITUC described the decision as restoring legal certainty after years of employer-led attempts to narrow international labour standards. According to the organization, the ruling reaffirms decades of ILO jurisprudence recognizing strikes as an essential component of freedom of association rather than a separate or optional right. Canadian labour also celebrated the ruling, having helped to advance the case.
The advisory opinion does not, however, determine every question about how strikes may be regulated. Governments may still impose certain limitations consistent with international law. But the ruling does decisively reject the argument that there is no internationally protected right to strike.
That outcome matters far beyond Geneva. International labour standards often shape constitutional interpretation, domestic legislation and labour board decisions around the world, including in Canada.
Canada Is Moving In The Opposite Direction
Unfortunately, Canada is moving away from the principles affirmed by the ICJ.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government has launched a Senate study examining whether changes should be made to the laws governing collective bargaining and strikes in federally regulated sectors. The stated objective is to reduce economic disruption caused by major work stoppages in transportation and other industries.
As labour scholars Andrew Stevens and Charles Smith argue, however, the review risks becoming an exercise in identifying new mechanisms to weaken a right Canadian courts have repeatedly recognized as constitutionally protected. Labour unions as well have roundly denounced the Senate report.
The report of course follows years of federal interventions that have steadily narrowed workers’ bargaining power and ability to strike.
Successive governments have legislated strikers back to work, referred disputes to binding arbitration or threatened intervention before strikes could fully unfold. Even where formal strike rights remain intact, workers and employers increasingly bargain under the expectation that governments will ultimately intervene if industrial action becomes too disruptive.
The adoption of federal anti-scab legislation represented an important, if limited, advance, but stronger protection against replacement workers means little when governments simultaneously become more willing to squash strikes altogether.
The right to strike is not merely symbolic. It is the mechanism that gives collective bargaining its force. Without it, negotiations become little more than consultations.
Defending Democratic Rights At Work
The ITUC’s Global Rights Index reminds us that attacks on workers’ rights rarely occur all at once. Instead, they accumulate gradually through legislative amendments, administrative decisions and government interventions that often appear limited in isolation. Over time, however, they fundamentally reshape the balance of power between labour and capital.
Canada increasingly demonstrates this process.
The country’s labour movement has secured some important victories in recent years, from stronger protections against replacement workers to gains in organizing rights in select provinces. But those wins exist alongside growing political pressure to insulate employers from the economic consequences of strikes.
That pressure misunderstands the purpose of collective bargaining. Strikes are disruptive because they redistribute power. The ability of workers to withhold their labour power is the primary counterweight to concentrated corporate power and managerial authority.
The ICJ, like the Supreme Court of Canada, has now reaffirmed that very principle at the highest level of international law. The question facing Canada is whether governments here will respect that principle, or continue searching for ways around it.
If the findings of the ITUC’s latest report are any indication, workers should expect the latter.
Around the world, governments are steadily narrowing labour rights in the name of economic stability, competitiveness and the “public interest.” Canada’s labour movement is confronting the same political current at home. It’s time to act accordingly.
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