Corporate underminers of democracy 2024
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Millions of workers have already mobilised for policy change and in the run-up to political elections. They have organised to expand worker power or took militant strike action on the job. Around the world, they are fighting for a vision of “democracy in which workers set the course in our communities, workplaces, countries, and international institutions together.”
This far-reaching campaign now places its focus on high-level global institutions, where government delegations negotiate key standards, treaties, and goals that effectively shape the world of work and thereby all of human society...
But there is another force, one that is unelected and seeks to dominate global affairs. It pushes a competing vision for the world that maintains inequalities and impunity for bad-faith actors, finances far-right political operatives, and values private profit over public and planetary good. That force is corporate power.
In consultation with social allies, global union federations, and researchers, the ITUC is scrutinising publicly available research to identify key players in the corporate world that profit by undermining democracy at all levels.
Corporate underminers of democracy is the ITUC’s list of emblematic companies that benefit financially by continuing to violate trade union and human rights, monopolise media and technology, exacerbate climate catastrophe, and privatise public services. They represent a wider corporate world that protects and expands its own profits by undermining democracy.
These companies deploy complex lobbying operations to undermine popular will and disrupt existing or nascent global policy that could hold them accountable. They are invariably led by ultra-wealthy individuals that support and finance far-right politicians and parties to further their own interests. When the far-right wins power, it discredits and defunds democratic global institutions; reduces taxes on the wealthy and on corporations; undercuts living wages; favours bilateral aid financing over multilateralism; and cracks down on human, trade union, and democratic rights, as evidenced by the ITUC’s Global Rights Index.
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The list of corporate underminers of democracy for 2024 is:
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