Workers’ Rights Make the Difference Around the World

By nearly every measure, countries with full collective bargaining rights rank high in key workplace and quality of life issues for working families, from health care and retirement security to paid maternity leave and work hours. (See chart below for details.) 

Yet with these worker and family friendly policies in place, productivity in many countries — France, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, to name a few — is higher than in the United States.

In the United States, collective bargaining coverage — the percentage of workers who are covered by and can exercise their workplace rights — is about 8 percent for private sector workers and 12 percent overall, far lower than any other democracy in the world. This gap really makes a difference when it comes to annual and sick leave, pensions, health care coverage and other policies that improve the quality of life of all of us.