Interactive Guide to Your Labor Rights

Welcome to the Interactive Guide to Your Labor Rights

What are my rights?

Universal rights protect basic rights for all humans, in all countries, regardless of nationality, race, color, sex, language, religion, place of residence, or any other status. They are an expression of the fundamental values shared by all member states of the United Nations. Similar to universal rights, international conventions express the intention of a state. However, in contrast to universal rights, ratified conventions are legally binding. Labor legislation varies among countries, to find out more about the specific labor legislation in your country see the interactive map below.

Article 23 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) (click here for more)

Article 23 of the UDHR states universal rights at work.

Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to fair conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
Everyone who works has the right to a fair salary if necessary supplementary means for their social protection.
Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Click here to see all the articles of the UDHR.

International Labour Organization Conventions (click here for more)

The listed international conventions below are legal instruments drawn up by the International Labour Organization (ILO). The ILO brings together governments, employers and employees in order to set labor standards and create programs to promote decent work for everyone. On the website of the ILO, you can find whether your country has ratified the conventions.

Important conventions for social dialogue are:

Convention 87: Freedom of Association
Convention 98: Freedom of Collective Negotiations
Convention 144: Right to Tripartite Consultation

In practice, these ILO conventions are there to prevent employers from pressuring employees that are members of a trade union or want to be members. An employer can also not pressure an employee into ending their membership. Additionally, trade union activities may not affect the employee’s career in a negative way. Therefore, it is illegal to fire anyone for being a trade union member or performing trade union activities.

Overview of country-specific labor legislation

By clicking on one of the countries in the world map below, you can find a detailed labor legislation and examples of collective bargaining agreements. To switch between the numbers, please first, close the information and open the other one. The countries covered in purple on the map, are with direct CNV Internationaal operations. The countries in yellow are where CNV Internationaal is currently exploring cooperation in. For the full list of countries please see below. If you would like to add more information on a specific country(ies), please do not hesitate to CONTACT US.