Asia Pacific unions push labour reforms and workers’ rights
The military conflict involving the USA, Israel and Iran and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, have disrupted energy supplies across the region. Electricity and energy sectors have been severely affected. As a result ordinary workers, particularly in oil-importing countries such as India, are bearing the brunt of rising oil prices. Delegates underlined the importance of solidarity. They also called for regional energy network meetings to be held every two years.
IndustriALL vice president and Asia Pacific co-chair, Akihiro Kaneko, said:
“The rising tensions in the Middle East are directly impacting Asian manufacturing and export industries through the instability of energy supply, the stagnation of maritime transport and rising logistics costs. The risk of spillovers to economic activity and employment represents a serious challenge that could shake the foundations of workers’ livelihoods.”
Global uncertainty is also being driven by unilateral trade policies imposed by major economies. These tariffs are having far-reaching consequences for global supply chains.
IndustriALL general secretary, Atle Høie, said:
“IndustriALL affiliates will continue the debate on what kind of trade system is beneficial to workers and should be promoted by the organization.”
In South-East Asia, Malaysian unions are engaging with the ministry of human resources to deepen labour law reforms.
In Indonesia, unions are urging the ministry of manpower to ratify the ILO Convention 190 on Violence and Harassment. They also seek to strengthen social security and introduce a living wage.
The regional women’s committee is formulating a strategy to implement the IndustriALL feminist resolution and gender transformative agenda. Key priority areas include pay equity, safety and health, reproductive health and mainstreaming gender across supply chains.
The Asia Pacific regional youth committee was formed on 15 May 2026. It is comprised of five youth delegates from the South Asia youth working group (SAYWG) and five youth delegates from the South-East Asia, East Asia and Pacific youth working group (SEA2PAC). The two existing subregional youth working groups will be phased out at the end of 2027.
The meeting concluded with a call for nominations of members to the steering committee of the global multinational committee. The next regional executive committee meeting will take place in October in Bangladesh.
ICJ rules the right to strike is protected under international law
IndustriALL, together with the ITUC and other global unions, has been at the forefront of defending this right since 2012, when employer representatives at the ILO began challenging the longstanding interpretation that Convention 87 protects the right to strike. In February 2015, IndustriALL joined a global day of action in more than 60 countries, pressing governments to defend the right to strike. Years of deadlock followed, with employers refusing to engage on freedom of association cases where the right to strike was at issue.
In November 2023, after nearly a decade of persistent pressure from workers’ representatives, the ILO Governing Body took the unprecedented step of referring the question to the ICJ. IndustriALL responded by mobilizing affiliates and launching a global petition, making clear that the right to strike is not a privilege to be negotiated away. It is a fundamental pillar of freedom of association.
Today’s ruling by the ICJ settles the dispute in favour of workers. While advisory opinions are not legally binding, they carry significant authority. Convention 87 has been ratified by 158 countries and is embedded in UN labour standards, OECD guidelines and international trade agreements. This gives the ruling far-reaching implications for labour law and industrial relations worldwide.
IndustriALL general secretary Atle Høie says:
“We have always been convinced of this outcome, but at the same time the opinion is a big relief. The right to strike is now once and for all confirmed as protected by ILO Convention 87. It is a big day for the world of work.”
Building inclusive and sustainable youth structure in Asia Pacific
Participants stressed that the youth structure must represent young unionists across South Asia, South East Asia, East Asia and the Pacific, while ensuring gender balance and strong leadership. It was agreed that the sub-regional youth working groups, the South Asia youth working group (SAYWG) and the South East Asia and Pacific youth committee (SEA2PAC) will be phased out and will be integrated into APRYC by the end of 2027. Over the next year, the APRYC will make new proposals on the nomination and selection process. This will happen in consultation with IndustriALL Asia Pacific leadership. All APRYC members commit to continue actively advocating for the rights and interests of young workers.
Prior to the APRYC meeting, the sub-regional youth working groups conducted a meeting on 28 April. They met to discuss and decide what representation structure would best represent them at the Asia Pacific level. Both working groups concluded that the APRYC should be composed of five members from each sub youth structure. These would be two co-chairs, a secretary and two bureau heads.
The 10 APRYC members elected their youth official. They also decided that the co-chair would represent their region in the global youth committee:
APRYC co-chair (woman): Jean Faye Daguman,
APRYC co-chair (man): Bhanu Pratap Singh,
APRYC secretary: Laura Cook.
Jean Faye Daguman, APRYC co-chair, said:
“Building an inclusive and sustainable youth structure in Asia Pacific means creating spaces where young workers are empowered to lead, organize and shape the future of the labour movement. I am committed to advancing just and equal representation, promoting evidence-based approaches and ensuring fairness in strengthening youth organizing and solidarity across the region.”
Bhanu Pratap Singh, APRYC co-chair, said:
“Strong coordination among young workers across Asia Pacific is essential to building a united and forward-looking labour movement. I will help strengthen collaboration, develop new generations of youth leadership and create meaningful connections between young trade unionists across sectors and sub-regions so that collective action and solidarity can grow stronger throughout the region.”
IndustriALL assistant general secretary, Christine Olivier, said:
“Young workers are not just the future, they are an important voice for change, bringing energy and a growing commitment to inclusion and equal opportunity. Building an inclusive youth structure in Asia Pacific helps to ensure that their voices are heard and their rights are represented.”
Botswana diamond firm trampling on workers’ rights
The union, an IndustriALL affiliate, says management is pushing through job cuts while refusing to bargain honestly with unions. Talks collapsed in mid-March. The union is now negotiating under protest as it believes the process is being abused but will not walk away and leave its members unprotected.
Management is hiding the books
At the heart of the dispute is a simple demand: show us the numbers. The union says management has refused to hand over audited accounts, wage records, company structure details and board minutes. Without this information, workers cannot assess whether the job cuts are genuinely necessary or whether alternatives exist. Section 25 of the Trade Unions and Employers Organizations Act requires management to share this information. Genesis HB is not doing so, making meaningful negotiation impossible.
Are union leaders being targeted?
Seven workers face retrenchment. Four of them sit on the union committee. The union believes this is no coincidence. Targeting union representatives to weaken workers’ collective voice is union-busting and it is illegal. The BDWU is putting management on notice that it will not let this stand.
A crisis made worse
The job cuts come at the worst possible time. Botswana’s diamond industry generates roughly 80 per cent of the country’s export earnings and funds a third of government spending and pays for schools, hospitals and public services that millions of Batswana depend on. That industry is now under severe pressure from laboratory-grown diamonds: synthetic stones that are chemically identical to mined gems but cost a fraction of the price. In just a few years they have captured an estimated 15 to 20 per cent of the global jewellery market, hitting hard on demand for natural diamonds.
Even De Beers, one of the most powerful companies in the diamond trade and Botswana’s most important industry partner, recorded a sharp drop in rough diamond sales in 2023 and has started selling laboratory-grown stones itself. This is a clear sign that the industry’s problems are deep and lasting, not temporary. In this climate, every job in the diamond value chain matters. The BDWU says management should be working with workers to find solutions not retrenching them.
What the union is demanding?
The union is calling on Genesis HB to stop the retrenchment process immediately and sit down with workers to develop a fair redundancy policy that genuinely explores alternatives to job losses. If management refuses, the union will take the dispute to the Commissioner of Labour and Social Security or apply to the Industrial Court for an urgent order to halt the process.
Workers will not be silenced
“Genesis HB thinks it can silence workers by targeting union leaders, but the union will fight back,”
said Dominic Mapoka, chairperson of the BDWU.
Paule-France Ndessomin, IndustriALL Sub-Saharan Africa regional secretary, placed the dispute in its wider context.
“Diamond-dependent countries are already bleeding jobs to synthetic stones. Companies that respond by crushing unions are adding injustice to injury. Retrenchments must be handled transparently, in a way that protects both unions and jobs.”
Mauritius slowly moves to demolish asbestos legacy
However union leaders are cautious. A parliamentary declaration is not a demolition order. The struggle over Mauritius asbestos houses, they say, is not over yet.
According to historical records, when cyclones Carol and Alix tore through Mauritius in 1962, they left devastation on a scale the island had rarely seen with eight people dead, over a hundred injured and 100 000 people left homeless. Nearly all the workers’ settlements in their path were flattened. The government’s response was swift: 3,113 social houses were immediately built to resettle the displaced.
However, the material chosen was a mixture of cement and asbestos which was cheap, durable and widely used across the British colonies then. Sixty years later, the people living in those houses are still paying for that decision with their lungs. In Mauritius, where residents of the social estates have lived alongside deteriorating asbestos panels for six decades, the full toll of the 1962 construction programme may not yet be visible in the mortality data.
Although Mauritius has banned asbestos imports through the Consumer Protection Act, the Dangerous Chemicals Control Act and the Constitution the restrictions have since been waived by law amendments, a move that unions have condemned. Further, Mauritius has not ratified International Labour Organization (ILO) Asbestos Convention 162 which calls for the substitution and elimination of asbestos, medical surveillance and compensation for workers exposed to asbestos, the right of workers to information about asbestos hazards, safe removal and disposal procedures and the responsibility of employers and states to prevent exposure at source.
The IndustriALL executive committee supported the call, by 12 African countries, to amend the Rotterdam Convention to include chrysotile asbestos on the list of hazardous industrial chemicals and has demonstrated against the asbestos trade.
A death that changed everything
The unions’ campaign origins lie in a case that exposed the scale of what the authorities had ignored. Claude Marguerite, a union member and resident of one of the asbestos estates, died of mesothelioma, in 1999, an aggressive cancer of the lining of the lungs and chest wall caused by asbestos exposure. After his death, the CMWEU went to the Supreme Court of Mauritius to obtain permission to exhume his body. It was a legally and emotionally tense decision, but the union’s leadership judged that without hard scientific evidence, the authorities would continue to look away.
Working with the University of Manchester, researchers conducted an asbestos fibre count on 10 grams of Marguerite’s lung tissue. The results were stark: 86,000 asbestos particles were identified. The findings gave the union the evidence it needed and ignited a mass public awareness campaign that would force the government to act.
A disease that does not forgive
According to the World Health Organization and International Agency for Research on Cancer guidance, asbestos is not a single hazard but a cluster of them. Prolonged exposure to its microscopic fibres, which lodge permanently in lung tissue and cannot be expelled, causes a range of serious and fatal conditions. Mesothelioma is the most feared: it typically presents decades after exposure, responds poorly to treatment and carries an average survival rate of about a year from diagnosis. Asbestosis, a chronic scarring of the lung tissue, causes progressive breathlessness and has no cure. Lung cancer risk is significantly higher in those exposed to asbestos.
Two decades of silence
In 2001 the government persuaded in part by the union campaign agreed to commission a national investigation into the adverse impact of asbestos. A Commonwealth asbestos expert, John Addison, was brought in to lead it. He had previously worked alongside Reeaz Chuttoo, then CMWEU’s technical adviser, on the decommissioning and asbestos removal at a sugar factory in Beau Plan in the Northern district of Pamplemousse.
The report has never been made public. No government, in 24 years, has dared to table it in parliament. The reason, union officials say, is that the report’s findings would expose the state to substantial civil damages claims from the asbestos houses’ residents, as well as from the thousands of workers who spent careers in sugar factories, hospitals, schools and other public and private sites where asbestos was usually used. The liability calculation, rather than the public health imperative, has driven successive governments’ approach to making the Addison report public.
“This is a declaration of good intentions by the government of Mauritius. We will be watching every step of the implementation. A vote is not a bulldozer. We will be in the streets, in the courts and in parliament until the last asbestos panel comes down and the families and communities are compensated,”
said Chuttoo, now CTSP president.
Paule-France Ndessomin, IndustriALL regional secretary for Sub-Saharan Africa emphasized:
“Convention 162 on asbestos is clear that states must protect workers from exposure, compensate those harmed and eliminate the hazard at source. Mauritius has an obligation, not a choice, to demolish these houses and be accountable to the affected families and communities and release the Addison report.”
IndustriALL withdraws from human rights agreement with Mercedes-Benz
The decision follows years of documented anti-union conduct by Mercedes-Benz at its plant in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, confirmed by the US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and the company’s failure to address the violations despite repeated opportunities to do so.
In a letter sent to Mercedes-Benz Group CEO Ola Källenius on 11 May 2026, IndustriALL general secretary Atle Høie set out four grounds for withdrawal: the company’s failure to remain neutral during union organizing at Tuscaloosa, its refusal to engage constructively with IndustriALL on solutions, its 2025 unilateral update of the agreement without resolving the Alabama situation, and its continued use of law firms whose stated business is opposing unionisation, including the firm managing MB’s own whistleblower channel in the US.
“Mercedes-Benz has broken every rule in the book. They committed to respecting the right to organize, the right to collective bargaining and neutrality. At the same time, at their plant in Alabama, they paid more than US$650,000 to bring union-busting firms onto their own site to pressure workers into voting against a union. That is not neutrality. That is not even close to neutrality. When Mercedes tells the outside world that it is neutral, it is not telling the truth. The workers in Alabama should continue their fight for a collective agreement,”
said Atle Høie.
A commitment made and broken
The Principles of Social Responsibility and Human Rights were signed by Mercedes-Benz and IndustriALL on 1 September 2021. The agreement stated that MB’s labour standards were “binding around the world for all managers and employees” and that “in the event of organizing campaigns, the company and its executives shall remain neutral.”
In January 2024, workers at the Tuscaloosa plant launched a campaign to join IndustriALL affiliate the United Auto Workers (UAW). What followed was one of the most aggressive union-busting campaigns in recent US history.
Mercedes-Benz hired at least five anti-union consulting firms, spending a documented US$659,116 to oppose the workers’ organizing drive. The most notorious was Road Warrior Productions, which advertises its expertise in getting workers “to vote non-union.” The company held mandatory captive-audience meetings, threatened workers with plant closure and loss of benefits if they voted for the union, and brought a minister onto the shop floor three days before the election to urge Black workers, who make up roughly 60 per cent of the workforce, to vote no.
Workers were told unionizing would be pointless. A 25-year employee with a spotless record was disciplined for telling colleagues he had union cards. The leading union organizer, Jeremy Kimbrell, had worked at the plant for 26 years. He was fired in February 2025 on what the UAW describes as a fabricated pretext.
The NLRB investigated and found merit in multiple charges that Mercedes had violated US labour law. In March 2026, Mercedes settled those charges. As part of the settlement, an official notice, signed by an HR manager and bearing the seal of the US government, was posted on the walls of the Tuscaloosa plant. It reads: “WE WILL NOT threaten you with the closure and/or relocation of the facility to a non-union location, like Mexico, or anywhere else, if you choose to be represented by a union.”
Mercedes did not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement.
Refusal to engage
Despite the NLRB findings, Mercedes refused to engage with IndustriALL on how to move forward. The company cited ongoing legal proceedings as justification for declining all attempts at dialogue, what Atle Høie’s letter describes as a “flimsy excuse.”
In 2025, Mercedes unilaterally updated the Principles of Social Responsibility and Human Rights without addressing or acknowledging the Alabama situation. IndustriALL considered this an attempt to reset the agreement’s credibility without earning it.
“You rejected all our attempts to jointly elaborate constructive solutions. You updated the Principles of Social Responsibility and Human Rights in 2025 without clarifying the incidents in the US, making it impossible for IndustriALL Global Union to continue as a signatory to the agreement,”
Atle Høie wrote to Ola Källenius.
The consultants hired by Mercedes compound the problem. The firms engaged to fight the Alabama organizing drive openly advertise their union-avoidance services. Their own promotional materials describe “defeating a union” as “gratifying,” offer to help employers maintain “union-free workplaces,” and promise to get workers “to vote non-union.” Several of these firms have documented records of unlawful conduct in previous campaigns. US federal labour judges found their principals had violated workers’ rights, before Mercedes hired them. These records were publicly available before Mercedes engaged them.
Under Mercedes’ own Integrity Code, the company is required to ensure its business partners comply with its principles. It did not.
The hearing
On 26 May 2026, the NLRB opens a formal hearing in Birmingham, Alabama, on UAW objections to the conduct of the May 2024 election. A regional director has found that five of those objections raise substantial and material issues of fact that could be grounds for overturning the election result. The hearing will examine, among other things, Mercedes’ mandatory captive-audience meetings and its discriminatory application of workplace policies against union supporters. It will also look at whether the company compelled workers on sick leave to attend and vote. The central question is whether this conduct prevented workers from making a free choice. In 2024, workers voted 2,642 against the union and 2,045 in favour, a margin of 597 votes out of approximately 5,075 eligible voters.
A different road is possible
IndustriALL has not closed the door. Should Mercedes change course, the agreement can be renewed.
The example of Volkswagen demonstrates that a different approach is possible. In Chattanooga, Tennessee, VW adopted genuine neutrality during the UAW’s 2024 organizing campaign. Workers voted by more than two to one to join the union. VW and the UAW subsequently reached a collective bargaining agreement. That is what the Mercedes Principles were supposed to guarantee for workers in Alabama.
“We once again call on Mercedes-Benz to cease its anti-union behaviour in the US and urge you not to cede the field to law firms and other opinion formers,”
Atle Høie wrote to Ola Källenius.
MENA youth take their seat at the table
The committee was founded following ten working sessions held remotely between February and May 2026. These sessions brought together representatives of the MENA youth network, affiliate leaders from across the region and members of IndustriALL secretariat and Regional Executive Committee. On 5 May 2026, the committee elected its founding leadership. There are eight members, including at least four women, drawn equally from MENA.
The committee’s establishment builds on more than a decade of youth organizing in the region. Since 2014, IndustriALL has worked with MENA affiliates to build the capacity of young workers. It established the MENA youth network and a series of national youth networks. In 2016, they held the region’s first youth conference. They launched a five-year empowerment project between 2018 and 2022.
The move from network to formal committee marks a deliberate shift in ambition from participation to leadership. The goal is to move away from tokenistic youth inclusion toward youth readiness. It aims to equip young workers in industrial sectors, multinational companies and global supply chains to genuinely influence decision-making.
Young workers in the MENA region face a complex set of pressures: precarious employment, high unemployment, accelerating digital and climate transformations, industrial automation and the challenges of the energy transition. All this takes place against a backdrop of limited youth representation in trade union structures.
The IndustriALL 4th Congress, held in Sydney in November 2025, created new institutional space for youth leadership. The Congress adopted statutory amendments to strengthen youth integration across IndustriALL governing bodies. It set a target of 30 per cent youth representation at all levels and activities. Additionally, it provided for the establishment of a global youth committee with regional committees feeding into it. The MENA committee’s two co-chairs automatically become members of that global body.
The committee is co-chaired by Sihame Elmazini of Morocco, youth and women’s coordinator at the Syndicat Nationale des Industries de la Métallurgie et Electromécanique (SNIME-CDT). Its other co-chair is Amjad Shehab of Iraq, president of the Basra Branch of the Iraqi General Federation of Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Unions (IGFOGPU).
The committee’s mandate includes strengthening union organizing among young workers. It also includes supporting affiliates to establish their own internal youth structures and developing training and mentoring strategies that keep pace with technological change and the shifting demands of the labour market.
The committee is not conceived as a standalone youth space but as a pathway into the wider movement. It aims to build a generation of young trade unionists capable of taking on leadership roles at local, national, regional and international levels. Moreover, it seeks to ensure intergenerational continuity within trade union work.
“Experience has shown that, despite the challenges, young trade unionists in the region are capable of taking on responsibility. The regional youth committee is a new initiative designed to support young people’s causes and utilize their energy and enthusiasm in trade union work,”
says Ahmed Kamel IndustriALL MENA regional secretary.
Organizing for a just future
The establishment of the MENA regional youth committee reflects IndustriALL’s broader commitment, affirmed at the 4thCongress, to the systematic integration of young people within its governing bodies and day-to-day activities. Young workers are not simply the future of the labour movement. Instead, they are active agents of change within it today.
By involving young people, the movement ensures the continuity of trade union work. Additionally, it builds a stronger, more socially just future for workers across the region.
“This committee is about more than representation. It is about building a generation of young workers who are equipped, confident and ready to lead. IndustriALL is committed to ensuring that young trade unionists in the MENA region have the structure and support to drive real change in their workplaces, their unions and across the movement,”
says Christina Olivier IndustriALL assistant general secretary.
Give workers a vision and they will help with solutions
That is the central argument coming from the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union (SACTWU), whose organizers are grappling with a question that global policy forums rarely answer. Specifically, how do you make a Just Transition relevant to workers who have never of heard the term? Simon Eppel, SACTWU research director who was in the room when the Just Transition manifesto for the textile and garment supply chain was launched, knows the gap between policy and factory floor.
“The Just Transition stuff right now is like preaching. You’ve got to do something about climate change. But there’s no incentive for workers to take the risk. Give them an incentive,”
he says.
The problem with reskilling in an economy without jobs
The Just Transition manifesto calls for reskilling and redeployment as central pillars of a Just Transition. SACTWU broadly supports these demands. However, they raise a critical challenge that is often overlooked in global policy discussions: reskilling only works where there are jobs to reskill into.
“Traditionally the most prominent part of the Just Transition concept is about reskilling and replacing workers. And that works in an economy of full employment. It just doesn’t work as well in the Global South,”
Simon Eppel explains.
In South Africa, unemployment is among the highest in the world. Therefore, asking workers to accept job losses on the promise of future opportunities is asking them to gamble with their livelihoods. SACTWU’s argument is to broaden the Just Transition vision beyond jobs. They want to include giving workers a stake in the assets required for decarbonization and sustainable production.
“Poverty is not only income-related. It is also asset-related. In a future of economic, climate, technology shocks and more we need to think about how to make workers more resilient, including by having assets that earn workers incomes, not only jobs.”
A practical vision: workers as co-owners
SACTWU is already developing models. The union is building an education programme that starts with problems workers already understand, like coal-fired boilers in textile factories that damage their health. Then it aims to build toward collective solutions.
“You start with the coal-fired boiler. Workers breathe that in every day. You make the link between their health, their community and the broader climate challenge. Then you come with solutions,”
Simon Eppel says.
One such solution involves replacing coal boilers with solar thermal technology, dramatically reducing fuel consumption. But crucially, SACTWU argues that workers should benefit not only from this change, but from owning a share of it.
“Why is the union movement not conceiving models where workers are enabled to buy machines, the boss rents it from them and they earn a nominal rent every month? This model could be marketed to European buyers as sourcing from factories who practice sustainable green growth,”
Simon Eppel challenges.
This is a vision the union believes workers could get behind. Not sacrifice, but shared opportunity.
What the Global South needs from the Global North
South Africa’s retail-textile value chain moves at a different pace from Europe’s. Local retailers are not yet demanding sustainable fibres or circular production models. This means the market pressure driving transition elsewhere simply does not exist here yet. But SACTWU is clear that this cannot be an excuse to wait.
“Left to its own devices, our local system will push us slowly. If we want to take advantage of the opportunities, we must push the system to move faster,”
Simon Eppel says.
To do that, the Global South needs three things from the Global North: recognition that different contexts require different pathways, affordable financing and more crucially long-term purchase commitments from global buyers.
“If buyers say, we’ll give you orders, not for six months, but a three-year commitment and here is money and exposure to technology then factories can make the changes. That is what you need to build businesses and jobs and to enable the transition,”
he adds.
Without that demand signal from Northern buyers, even willing factories cannot justify the investment in green technology.
Moving from defence to offence
Historically, unions have been defensive by nature, protecting what exists. It is a shift that Simon Eppel, who has spent years working with garment workers on the Cape Flats, believes unions cannot afford to avoid.
“You can’t purely be defensive. You need to be offensive too. If we simply defend against risks, the nature and direction of change will be defined for us and we will lose the chance to shape the future as different from the present. To be offensive, you need an alternative world you are putting forward,”
he explains.
That means experimenting, sharing what works across unions globally and being willing to take risks even when the outcome is uncertain. SACTWU is now raising funds for an education and pilot project programme and identifying factories where new models could be tested.
A transition that works for everyone
The Just Transition manifesto sets out bold demands for brands, employers and governments. SACTWU supports the direction but insists that unless those demands are grounded in the lived reality of workers in the Global South, they risk remaining exactly that: demands on paper.
“You don’t have to learn basic human behaviour and human need. You just need to think about workers as people rather than as policy,”
he says.
For SACTWU, a Just Transition is not a compliance exercise or a green marketing opportunity. Instead, it is a chance to build a new relationship between workers, technology and ownership. This is one where the people who make our clothes also have a stake in the future of the industry that depends on them.
Hormuz crisis exposes energy skills gap
The European Commission has already fast-tracked its AccelerateEU package, bringing forward electrification targets and grid investment plans. Across Asia, governments are rushing to expand solar, wind and battery capacity. These are not transition plans developed through social dialogue. They are emergency responses to a supply shock, and the workers who will build and operate the new system are not at the table.
That is not a new problem. It is an old one, moving faster.
The IEA’s April Oil Market Report sets out the scale of what has already happened. Global oil supply fell by 10.1 million barrels per day in March, the largest disruption in the history of the global oil market. Petrochemical plants across Asia have cut operating rates by between 10 and 30 per cent, threatening supply chains in manufacturing, textiles, construction and packaging. Governments across four continents, from Argentina to Ethiopia, from Pakistan to the Philippines, have introduced emergency measures to reduce fuel consumption. And the IEA is unambiguous about what restoring the energy system requires. The IEA’s own April Oil Market Report lists “the mobilisation of skilled labour and contractors” as a precondition for supply recovery, alongside political stability and the reopening of the strait itself.
Workers already knew the energy system was fragile. They knew the transition was coming and that too little was being done to shape it around their needs. What the Hormuz crisis has changed is the speed. Decisions that were supposed to take years are being made in weeks.
What IndustriALL president said and why it matters now
When IndustriALL president, Christiane Benner visited IndustriALL’s Geneva headquarters in March, she was direct about what Just Transition actually requires.
“To find common ground, our union needs one thing above all else: clarity on what decarbonization actually means for individual workplaces.” That means jointly analyzing which locations will be significantly affected, what skills will be needed and where jobs are at risk or new ones will be created. “Such a shared framework of facts lays the groundwork so that employees do not feel steamrolled.”
The Hormuz crisis has not changed that argument. It has made the consequences of ignoring it visible to everyone. Industry observers have warned that the world is going to get the energy transition forced on it in a very painful way, very quickly. That is precisely what IndustriALL and many other global unions have spent years trying to prevent.
The question is no longer whether the transition happens. It is whether workers help shape what replaces the system that just failed, or have that decision made for them by governments and employers responding to a crisis with no plan for labour.
The scale of the skills gap
The IEA’s World Energy Employment 2025report put numbers to what workers on the ground already know. The energy sector now employs 76 million people worldwide, up more than 5 million since 2019 and has accounted for 2.4 per cent of all net new jobs created globally over the past five years. Energy employment grew at 2.2 per cent in 2024, nearly double the economy-wide rate.
But inside that growth story is a crisis in the making. Out of 700 energy-related companies, unions and training institutions participating in the IEA’s Energy Employment Survey, more than half reported critical hiring bottlenecks already threatening energy infrastructure delivery. To prevent that gap widening further by 2030, the number of qualified new entrants into the energy sector would need to rise by 40 per cent, requiring an additional US$2.6 billion per year in training investment globally. That is less than 0.1 per cent of world education spending.
The Hormuz crisis has not created that gap. It has exposed it. Rebuilding energy supply chains, in whatever direction governments now choose, will require the workers, the skills and the training institutions that barely exist. Knowing where they are, and where they are not, is the starting point.
Why unions cannot sit out the IEA survey
That is what makes the IEA Employment and Skills Survey, closing 15 May, more urgent than it has ever been.
Diana Junquera Curiel, IndustriALL’s director for Just Transition and industrial policy, is direct about what is at stake:
“the Hormuz crisis has done in weeks what we have been arguing for years: it has made the connection between energy security and workers impossible to ignore. The data from this survey is how we turn that moment into leverage, in every negotiation, every policy discussion, every conversation with governments and employers about what rebuilding actually requires. Without union voices in it, those arguments are weaker. It is that simple.”
Christiane Benner has been clear on what makes a Just Transition work in practice. It is not grand policy commitments. It is concrete tools: collectively bargained training programmes, transformation funds that workers help design and binding employment prospects that give people a reason to trust the process.
Source: IEA labour and Employment survey 2025
Those demands only carry weight when they are backed by credible, internationally recognized data. The IEA Labour Employment Survey , gathering responses from workers and their representatives across 65 countries, asked what makes a job decent. The answers were unambiguous: fair pay (90 per cent), employment security (73 per cent) and a safe working environment (71 per cent). These are the fundamentals that collective bargaining delivers. Yet the same survey found that only 35 per cent of workers classified clean energy jobs as quality jobs with both good conditions and good pay. That gap, between what workers say a decent job requires and what the energy transition is currently offering, is precisely what unions exist to close. Those priorities, recorded in a report read by governments and employers worldwide, put workers’ demands on the table in rooms where unions are not always present.
The 2026 survey can do the same. But only if affiliates show up.
Every response from a union, a worker representative or a training institution makes the final report harder to ignore. It makes the skills gap harder to dismiss. It makes the case for collectively bargained training easier to win.
The energy shock has arrived. The question now is whether workers’ experience is counted in what comes next, or whether governments and employers rebuild the system without them, again.
Deregulation drive weakens worker protections across South Asia
Trade union leaders from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka came together for a webinar on labour laws reforms, organized by IndustriALL on 4 May. Discussions highlighted how this shift is being operationalized. Wages remain stagnant, fixed-term employment is normalized and contracting expanded, reducing employer accountability.
Labour law reforms undermine rights
Governments are using legal reforms to narrow definitions of workers, making it harder to claim rights and protections. Union registration is becoming more restrictive, while surveillance and data exposure deter organizing. Joining a union is increasingly becoming a risk, weakening collective power and discouraging resistance.
Increased participation of women and young workers is often presented as progress. However, speakers warned about the dangers of this expansion taking place through precarious and low-paid work, without corresponding protections, job security or safeguards against exploitation.
Speakers highlighted a striking pattern of weak implementation of labour laws. Widespread labour law violations, ineffective inspection systems and increased barriers around organizing consistently undermine enforcement, even where formal protections exist.
This raised a critical question: when non-implementation is this widespread, does it cease to be a gap and become a strategy?
Building a collective response
Systematic documentation of violations and use of international mechanisms were identified as key tools. India’s inclusion in the preliminary list for ILO Committee on the Application of Standards (CAS) under Convention 081 offers a opportunity to push accountability, but sustained collective resistance will be essential to defend worker rights.
Unions stressed that growing informalization, labour deregulation and exclusion of workers from policy-making reflect a systemic shift across South Asia. These developments cannot be addressed in isolation. Unions must build stronger regional solidarity to develop common strategies, increase pressure and confront cross-border drivers of deregulation.
Kemal Özkan, assistant general secretary of IndustriALL says:
“Across global governance spaces, labour protections are treated as obstacles, collective rights as rigidity and precarity is repackaged as opportunity. What we are witnessing is not just economic change, but a deliberate weakening of democratic institutions and worker power.”
Ashutosh Bhattacharya, regional secretary of IndustriALL South Asia adds:
“In the name of consolidation and deregulation, hard-won rights are being systematically rolled back. This is why strengthening international solidarity and collective action is no longer optional, it is essential.”
