Around the world, workers’ rights are in “freefall,” with the Trump administration in the lead of a global far-right alliance that’s waging a “global war on labor rights.” That’s the conclusion of the latest Global Rights Index report published by the International Trade Union Confederation, the world’s largest trade union federation, representing 191 million workers in 169 countries.
“We are witnessing a coup against democracy, a concerted, sustained assault by state authorities and the corporate underminers of democracy on the rights and welfare of workers,” the 2025 Index says.
This attack is orchestrated by far-right demagogues backed by billionaires who are determined to reshape the world in their own interests at the expense of ordinary working people.
The Global Rights Index is the only comprehensive international study of the state of workers’ rights and trade union freedoms. It has been produced annually since 2014. This year’s edition of the report warns of a “stark and worsening global crisis for workers and unions.”
While similar trends are being observed in multiple countries, the Trump administration is clearly seen as leading the charge, followed by politicians elsewhere. Trump, the ITUC points out,
has taken a wrecking ball to the collective labor rights of workers and brought anti-union billionaires into the heart of policymaking.
Mass layoffs of federal workers, the stripping of union protections for TSA workers, the firing of a member of the National Labor Relations Board, and other offenses by Trump all come in for heavy criticism.
Bosses in command
The report takes an assertive class struggle approach to analyzing the erosion of democracy internationally, pinpointing the fact that attacks on unions and workers’ organizations are being spearheaded by the most extreme elements of big capital, which have lodged themselves directly in the highest positions of the state.
“Whether it’s Donald Trump and Elon Musk in the U.S. or Javier Milei and Eduardo Eurnekian in Argentina, we see the same playbook,” ITUC General Secretary Luc Triangle said at the report’s release.
“The concentration of economic power” is allowing “a small group of billionaires to exert outsized influence over global decision-making,” Triangle said. He argued that “the global trade union movement is the largest democratic social force in the world” and that the stronger workers’ organizations are, the stronger will be the struggle to preserve the rights of all.
Though they don’t use words like fascism or capitalism, the ITUC authors emphasize that there is no way to save democracy without workers being front and center. The class orientation of their investigation comes as a welcome intervention in debates taking place in progressive circles lately, which treat topics like “authoritarianism” and “democracy” in a class-neutral manner.
“Our democratic freedoms are under attack by an ever-smaller number of people in control of an increasingly disproportionate slice of the pie…a tiny fraction of the global population—less than 1%—controls nearly half the world’s wealth,” the report says. And it is that tiny fraction which is leading the “coup on democracy.”
Global war on labor
Trends observed globally include a sharp escalation in the violation of basic rights, including restricting access to impartial justice, limits on free speech and assembly, banning the rights to strike and organize workplaces, and sharp curtailments of collective bargaining.
Across the board, average workers’ rights ratings declined in most countries over the past year. Only seven out of 151 nations studied received a top-tier rating, down from 18 a decade ago. Average scores in Europe and the Americas clocked in at their lowest level since the Global Rights Index was started.
Some key indicators from the 2025 Global Rights Index produced by ITUC.
Some 87% of the world’s governments violated the right to strike last year; 80% violated the right to collective bargaining, and almost three-quarters—72%—restricted workers’ access to fair courts when facing problems with employers or public officials.
Alongside the U.S., Argentina was another prime example showcasing the correlation between the decline of civil liberties and coordinated attacks on trade unions and workers. In barely more than a year, the Milei government has tried to pass 366 different laws to deregulate working conditions and wages, destroy union protections, and privatize public companies.
Several of these attempts have succeeded, with the most dangerous being the so-called “Omnibus Law,” which grants the president the power to rule by decree without congressional approval in cases where a declaration of emergency is made. It’s akin to the “Enabling Act” used in fascist Germany to grant Adolf Hitler unrestrained power in 1933.
Some governments that have been regulars on the list of labor rights violators make appearances again this year.
In the Philippines, workers who tried to provide humanitarian aid to displaced Indigenous communities face criminal charges. In Benin, workers were attacked and arrested during May Day demonstrations. Women workers in Egypt who dared to strike over the minimum wage lost their jobs and ended up in jail. In the Russian Federation, pandemic-era restrictions on the size of public gatherings have been held over and used to stop union meetings and demonstrations under the guise of protecting public health.
In Palestine, war was singled out as a key factor affecting not only workers’ economic situation but their very ability to physically survive. More than 200,000 Palestinian workers have been denied wages as the Israeli government cut them out of the labor market. That comes on top, of course, of the tens of thousands of workers killed by bombs and bullets and the millions displaced from jobs and homes.
Inside Israel, too, workers are under attack. Trade unions have called general strikes over the past year to protest government policies, including limits on the rights to strike and collective bargaining.
The murders of workers in at least five countries last year were traced directly to their participation in the labor movement: Cameroon, Colombia, Guatemala, Peru, and South Africa. The true numbers and countries involved are almost certainly higher.
Even in countries where legislation is thought to be more labor-friendly, workers are seeing drastic reductions of their rights. In France, almost 40% of collective agreements last year were imposed unilaterally by bosses, without union representation. In Sweden, Musk’s Tesla EV corporation completely bypassed negotiations with its workers, replacing striking workers with scabs rather than negotiating.
Only three countries on the entire planet—Australia, Mexico, and Oman—saw their ratings improve in 2025.
The ITUC’s Triangle warned that the billionaires who financially support and politically influence the most anti-labor governments have become bolder in exercising their power. The politicians fronting for them, meanwhile, rely on worsening economic conditions to increase their vote share and consolidate power.
“In the last four or five years, with COVID and increased inflation, people lost purchasing power, and that’s the breeding ground to get voters to support extremist parties, which actually don’t offer any solution for the working people,” he said.
Massive tax cuts for the wealthy combined with out-of-control arms spending and cuts to public services—the main features of Trump’s “big beautiful bill” currently working its way through the U.S. Senate—are the essence of the current policymaking consensus in many countries.
“The five richest people in the world more than doubled their wealth over the last five years, while 60% of the population of the world got poorer,” Triangle pointed out.
We are investing nearly $3 trillion USD as a world into arms and into weapons, and there is unfair taxation. So, if we want to find the money for delivering to working people what they really need—good wages, more jobs, rights, social protections—it’s a matter of political choice.
Fighting back
To shape those choices, the ITUC launched a campaign earlier this year called “For Democracy That Delivers.” It is urging unions, workers’ organizations, social movement allies, international institutions, and a broad range of coalition partners to join the effort.
Centered on demands for peace and collective power, social justice and prosperity for all, and a just transition and worker-centered digital transformation, the campaign lays out a calendar of activities for the rest of 2025, focused on what the federation calls five key “moments.”
In April and May, webinars and physical mobilizations focused on preparing recommendations and petitions to strengthen the power of the International Labour Organization ahead of that group’s conference in June.
The month of June is dedicated to injecting greater democracy into the structures and systems of global finance by supporting the Trade Union Commission at the United Nations Financing for Development conference.
Goals in late summer will be aligned with the fight for peace and against the arms trade as part of commemorations of the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The fall months of September and October will see major physical demonstrations in the countries where governments are playing a role in the World Social Summit, which convenes in November, and digital demonstrations elsewhere. ITUC hopes to put trade union demands at the forefront of the summit’s agenda.
And in November, attention shifts to advancing union and workers’ priorities around climate change and a just transition during the COP30 climate summit in Brazil.
The best solution to save democracy isn’t a new one, according to the ITUC; It’s a time-tested answer to the problems the world now faces.
“One of the most powerful tools we have to resist the erosion of democracy and deepening of inequality is our collective power,” Triangle said in the Global Rights Index.
Joining a union offers protection against exploitation and creates a united front against the well-connected global elite—those intent on reshaping the world to their benefit while forcing workers to bear the cost.
Building collective power and a united front may not be novel, but the ways workers will have to go about achieving those goals will be. Illuminating the direct connection between the political assaults on democracy and the economic assaults on workers, as ITUC’s Global Rights Index does, is a good start, though. It makes clear the breadth of the coalition that’s needed in the period ahead.