World Day for Decent Work is a day when workers and trade unionists all over the world stand up for decent work. This year the BWI would like to use this day to highlight the importance of promoting decent work within multinational companies.
The last decades the power of large multinational corporations has grown dramatically while States’ power to regulate these business have decreased. There are international instruments such as the UN Global Compact and OECD guidelines for multinational enterprises. However, even if these instruments are helpful they are not sufficient to protect workers’ and human rights towards the enormously powerful business interests.
"To meet these challanges the trade union movement too needs to go global and strategize on how to organize and bargain with multinational companies," said Ambet Yuson, general secretary of the BWI.
Today we stand with the dismissed workers at Skanska in the United states, with the wood workers of SFI in Malaysia who fight for union recongiton, workers of Etex in Argentina, CUB in Australia, Sinohydro in Cambodia and all other who are defending their rights against big powerful corporations. We also released a white paper on the operations of one of the world’s leading construction companies – Skanska and stand with the workers blacklisted and otherwise mistreated within its supply chains.