The ITUC is not prone to histrionics, nor does it chase media cycles. It is a big tent trade union confederation, with 346 diverse affiliate organisations in more than 170 countries and territories representing some 200 million workers. Inside of its structures, it prioritises consensus, democracy, and solidarity, and outside of them the rule of law, respect for human and trade union rights, and multilateralism.
It transcends national political affiliations, operating at the level of the United Nations, International Labour Organisation, and the international financial institutions. When an institution with this profile sounds the alarm, it does so with considerable gravity.
Since launching its Corporate Underminers of Democracy list in 2024, the ITUC has described the normalisation of a vicious cycle.
Companies violate trade union and human rights with virtual impunity, weakening the ability of workers to organise and negotiate their fair share of the fruits of their labour.
Rather than being used to pay workers proportionate wages or benefits, or to support public services and social protections through tax, those gains are extracted as profit and turned into big paydays for shareholders or executives and used to consolidate or monopolise industries. That immense power is then wielded through intensive lobbying to weaken what restraints may exist and invested in political projects that ensure the cycle’s continuation through deregulation, privatization, reduced taxes on corporations and the wealthy, and even repression of democratic rights when necessary.
The result is a downward spiral of democratic degradation, in which corporate power dominates and working people cannot get a foothold in the economy or political system.
In a 2025 letter to world leaders marking the 80th anniversary of the end of the second world war, ITUC General Secretary Luc Triangle observed that, “Decades of deregulation and neoliberalism have fuelled distrust, enabling a dangerous rise of new forms of fascism and authoritarianism. Today, a loose alliance of billionaires, tech elites, and far-right forces is exploiting economic despair and institutional weakness to dismantle democracy.”
With the publication of its 2026 list, the ITUC cautions that this demolition project is nearly complete, as the companies it names step into roles that are in many ways indistinguishable from and as consequential as those played by governments.
Amazon, the only company to make the list all three years, has embedded itself in nearly every aspect of society. Any service that uses the internet potentially puts you in contact with its services. It repays this public trust with alleged tax avoidance, price fixing, union-busting and mass layoffs driven by automation. In a letter, its own employees warned that its “all-costs-justified, warp-speed approach to AI development will do staggering damage to democracy, to our jobs, and to the earth.”
Apollo Global Management, led by far-right billionaire Marc Rowan, is a prime example of how executives use corporate power to pursue political agendas. A Trump donor, Rowan collaborated with Blackstone CEO Steve Schwartzman to design the administration’s right-wing assault on American universities.
The Bolloré Group shapes French public discourse through its media dominance, amplifying far-right voices and anti-migrant sentiment. Its expansion was financed through its operations in West Africa, where palm oil workers are exploited and the company faces allegations of corruption with Togo’s authoritarian dynasty.
OpenAI postures as a champion of democracy and regulation, while lobbying against regulatory safeguards. It publishes industrial, military, and governance policy like a global political party, while single-day donations by its executives to far-right political projects exceed some countries’ entire election campaign budgets.
In its own political manifesto, Palantir promotes a technofascist anti-democratic vision of the future, urging tech workers to defend the nation and the “West’s dominant place in the geopolitical order.” With a revolving door between it and defence ministries, it has secured rapid revenue growth largely from military work, as well as contracts for health services and immigration enforcement, while avoiding taxes on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
Tesla embodies trillionaire Elon Musk’s political vision. It races to replace its workers with automation and employs aggressive union-busting in Germany and Sweden. In the US, Musk used his US government role to lay off hundreds of thousands of federal workers and cut millions of dollars of life-saving foreign aid. In the midterm elections, he spent more than US$400 million backing far-right, anti-democratic, anti-regulation candidates.
Unlike their predecessors who brought colonial-era corporate states under public control a century ago, many governments today appear unwilling or unable to resist forfeiting public power, data, and wealth to these undemocratic corporate behemoths.
But there are breaks in these dark clouds, as the people are increasingly taking the struggle into their own hands. The ITUC’s list is filled with stories of resistance and success by workers, trade unions, and social movements, all showing how this vicious cycle can be broken by fighting for democracy work and in society.
As youth protests shake Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, as popular forces defy electoral expectations in Brazil and Serbia, and as unions notch victories large and small in the roots of corporate power, a new, pluralist, workers’ vision for democracy is coming into view.
A billionaire coup against democracy may be underway, but a working-class democratic renewal is rising to meet it.
