Country Foundations

Right to form and join trade unions

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 23. Not present in the US Constitution.

Note on this measure. Do NOT use CCP TRADEUN here — it codes a DUTY to join unions, the opposite of a right. V-Dem has no union-specific measure; CSO entry/exit freedom is the closest proxy.

Constitutions declaring it
85 / 158
US declares it
0%
US practices it
85%

Does declaring it change anything?

Distribution of practiced scores, split by whether the constitution declares the right. If the two distributions look alike, the words on the page are not doing much work on their own.

Constitutions that declare it (85)
0100
Constitutions that are silent (34)
0100

Mean practiced score: 62% where declared, versus 56% where silent.

What the text actually says

Passages tagged with this topic, from the Constitute Project.

South Africa

Every worker has the right- to form and join a trade union;

Every worker has the right- to strike.

Country by country

CountryDeclaredPracticed
Albania100%72%
Algeria100%32%
Argentina100%70%
Armenia100%91%
Azerbaijan100%15%
Belarus100%0%
Benin100%68%
Bolivia100%58%
Brazil100%82%
Bulgaria100%69%
Cambodia100%33%
Cameroon100%39%
Chad100%42%
Colombia100%73%
Costa Rica100%87%
Croatia100%67%
Cyprus100%75%
Democratic Republic of the Congo100%47%
Djibouti100%50%
El Salvador100%57%
Estonia100%90%
Ethiopia100%55%
Georgia100%67%
Greece100%75%
Guatemala100%65%
Guinea-Bissau100%58%
Haiti100%80%
Hungary100%49%
Kenya100%69%
Latvia100%78%
Lithuania100%68%
Luxembourg100%88%
Maldives100%55%
Mauritania100%51%
Mexico100%68%
Moldova100%74%
Mozambique100%63%
Namibia100%82%
Nicaragua100%6%
Niger100%77%
North Macedonia100%72%
Panama100%69%
Paraguay100%73%
Peru100%80%
Philippines100%73%
Poland100%62%
Portugal100%75%
Romania100%73%
Russia100%18%
Rwanda100%30%
Sao Tome and Principe100%65%
Senegal100%80%
Seychelles100%68%
Slovakia100%61%
Slovenia100%71%
South Africa100%86%
Spain100%80%
Suriname100%85%
Switzerland100%83%
Timor-Leste100%78%