Who cares about workers' rights? The effects of violations of trade unions' rights on donors' funding decisions in the ILO

Abstract. This paper analyses the relationship between compliance with trade union rights and donors’ aid decisions as evidenced through multi-bilateral contributions to the ILO and a database of Labour Rights’ Indicators. Despite trade union rights being a fundamental worker right that all ILO Member states must uphold, the study finds that the level of labour rights violations is not systematically related to the volume of multi-bi aid channelled through the ILO to recipient countries. Nevertheless, a substantial share of ILO’s voluntary funded programmes implemented in countries with highest labour rights violations targets the strengthening of workers’ organizations, which leads to a discussion on optimal levels of funding in such situations and on conditioning of aid allocation on normative multilateral mechanisms, such as the ILO’s supervisory body.