Strengthening the Role of Trade Unions to Achieve Social Justice

Decent work is a non-negotiable pillar of social justice. Amid the issues of workplace injustices and waning labor rights, the role of trade unions is critical in ensuring the achievement of fair and safe employment for all.

Ensuring Decent Work

People work to obtain the means to support their lives. However, as everything gets more expensive, from housing to food prices, a single monthly paycheck is often not enough anymore. Against this backdrop, the journey to ensure decent work for all must continue.

Decent work means having equal opportunities for things such as productive work, fair income, and social protection. This is a vital aspect of human rights. Supposedly, employers are responsible for providing these to workers, and governments must set the stage and ensure compliance through policies, regulations, and monitoring.

However, workers must also have the right to advocate for their welfare and wellbeing, including through trade unions.

Trade unions, also called labor unions, are workers’ organizations whose aim is to safeguard and improve their employment and working conditions through dialogue, bargaining, and advocacy. They have a bigger chance to demand changes for fair wages, working hours, and workplace safety because they move as a collective, rather than as individuals.

Historically, unions have been the major drivers of governments and employers acknowledging labor rights, including addressing human rights abuses in business operations. They have been walking side by side with other global human rights movements as well.

Weakening Trade Unions & Changing Employment

While trade unions’ roles are vital for the reasons outlined above, the number of workers joining unions is decreasing. The OECD has noted declining union density among its member countries, averaging 15.2% in 2023. Union density is the percentage of workers who are trade union members within a location, out of the total number of workers.

Reprisals against workers and trade unions become increasingly widespread. The ITUC Global Rights Index 2025 reveals that 112 country governments and authorities restrict the process to legal union registration. In three out of every four countries, workers are denied the freedom of association and to organise, which are the core principles of international labor law.

On the other hand, the emergence of gig work and digital-based work also poses a new challenge for unions. Gig workers often operate on an individual basis, meaning each person tends to have different working hours, wages, and conditions. These differences can make it difficult for them to develop a sense of belonging and collective identity as workers, thereby hindering their participation in unions.

Transformation Needed

The world of work is changing, but ensuring decent work stays at the forefront of our efforts to achieve social justice. For trade unions, this means encouraging organizational transformation toward more inclusive and collaborative unions. A report by the International Labour Organization summarizes several key transformations unions deem essential:

• Expanding representation and inclusion in a changing world of work, including supporting legal and institutional framework reforms to include vulnerable groups to ensure their representation and protection.
• Building economic expertise to influence decision-making at national and international levels, as well as enterprise and sectoral levels.
• Reinforcing transnational cooperation and trade union solidarity. This is particularly important to efforts to hold multinational enterprises accountable and to influence global discussions on related issues.
• Building alliances with NGOs, academic institutions, and civil society organizations to protect civic space, safeguard freedoms, and hold governments and corporations accountable to the principles of social justice.

Editor: Nazalea Kusuma