The right to freedom of association involves the right of individuals to interact and organize among themselves to collectively express, promote, pursue and defend common interests. This includes the right to form trade unions. Recognizing international labor laws, many DFIs prohibit retaliation against workers exercising their rights to associate.  According to the IFC’s Performance Standard 2: 

“[T]he client will not discourage workers from electing worker representatives, forming or joining workers’ organizations of their choosing, or from bargaining collectively, and will not discriminate or retaliate against workers who participate, or seek to participate, in such organizations and collective bargaining.” 

IFC acknowledges that this section of the Performance Standards draws upon ILO Convention 98 which states that “workers’ and employers’ organisations shall enjoy adequate protection against any acts of interference by each other or each other’s agents or members in their establishment.”

Despite this commitment to defending the freedom of association, we’ve identified multiple instances in which hotel workers were threatened for supporting their union. In some cases, workers were interrogated by management about why they signed a petition, and told that if they were to take action, such as striking, that they would be easy to replace.  One of the most egregious violations of freedom of association is the termination of union delegates, which occurred at hotels in Ivory Coast and Guinea.

Case Study: The Sheraton Grand Conakry

At the IFC-financed Sheraton Grand Conakry, in Guinea, two union delegates, Amadou and Alhassane Diallo, were terminated in October 2020 following a meeting in which they attempted to defend a coworker who also faced termination. They were acting as union delegates, and were within their rights to defend their coworker. They pursued legal action against the Sheraton management and the Guinean labor tribunal ruled in their favor in March 2023, claiming the terminations were “without any real or valid basis.” Despite multiple complaints and attempts to persuade the IFC and hotel management to reinstate the delegates, no progress has been made. With proper guidance, the client would have known that such terminations would not only be contrary to the IFC’s policies, but also unlawful under Guinean law and detrimental to the workforce and the hotel’s operations.

Alhassane Diallo and Amadou Diallo