"Huge Changes" Made to New Draft Union Law | November 18, 2011
Phnom Penh Post | Dave Welsh, the Solidarity Center's country program director in Cambodia, said the Ministry of Labor was to be commended for heeding criticisms of a law that started off as what could have been “the most draconian trade union law in the region.”

Can Unions Open Burma? | November 4, 2011
Progressive Policy Institute | Solidarity Center rule of law expert Earl Brown discusses whether Burma's new labor law, which for the first time in memory appears to permit independent unions to register and function legally, will bear real results for workers.

Egyptian Labor Organizes | October 18, 2011
Marketplace World | Reporter Julia Simon interviews Egyptian labor activists including EFIU President Kamal Abu Eita and Solidarity Center Program Officer Marian Fadel. 26:45 minutes

Fault Lines in Bahrain | August 10, 2011
New America Foundation | The Solidarity Center's Shawna Bader-Blau was a featured speaker at last night's New America Foundation presentation, "Fault Lines in Bahrain." Watch the 30-minute Al-Jazeera video and post-viewing discussion, and follow the Twitter conversation.

Chuck Manatt, One of America's Great Democracy Activists, Both Here and Abroad | August 4, 2011
Huffington Post | Charles Manatt, who died on July 22, helped found the National Endowment for Democracy, of which the Solidarity Center is a core institute, writes John Sullivan, executive director of the Center for International Private Enterprise, another NED core grantee.

Democratic Reform @ Democracy that Delivers for Women | July 22, 2011
Committee for International Private Enterprise | CIPE hosted a June 20-21 session on women in democratic reform, where Solidarity Center Interim Executive Director Nancy Mills joined moderator Barbara Haig, Deputy to the President for Policy and Strategy at the National Endowment for Democracy, along with CIPE Deputy Director Jean Rogers, National Democratic Institute Vice President Shari K. Bryan, and Michelle Bekkering, Director of the Women's Democracy Network at the International Republican Institute (1:18:51 video; Mills’s segments are at 24:00-37:10, 49:14-51:19, and 1:09:14-1:11:49).

What Have Workers Gained from Egypt’s Revolution? | July 20, 2011
Foreign Policy | Joel Beinin, author of the Solidarity Center report "Justice for All: The Struggle for Worker Rights in Egypt," writes that although the lives of Egyptian working people are still cheap in the eyes of the government and private corporations, what has changed is that workers themselves no longer accept this premise.

Key Force in Tahrir Square: Egypt's Labor Movement | July 8, 2011
Christian Science Monitor | CSM's Sarah Lynch reports that Joel Beinin sees the last decade of mobilization by various political and social groups – many of them workers – as one of the driving forces behind the revolution. There were more than 2,600 demonstrations, sit-ins, strikes, and gatherings from 1998 to 2008, according to data compiled by the Solidarity Center.

Egypt's Suez Canal Workers Defy Their "Arrogant Gods" | July 6, 2011
Al Ahram Online | According to the Solidarity Center's February 2010 report "Justice for All: The Struggle for Worker Rights in Egypt," more than 1.7 million workers have engaged in 1,900 strikes and other forms of protest from 2004 to 2008.

Brazilian Chemical Workers Discuss Solidarity through Union Networking | July 4, 2011
International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions website | "Solidarity and Equal Opportunities: Principles of Trade Union Networks,” supported and attended by numerous labor organizations including the Solidarity Center, brought together more than 60 union representatives from 24 companies.

No More Culture of Impunity in Oil Industry—PENGASSAN Warns | June 30, 2011
Vanguard | Local and international exposure, coupled with the support of the Solidarity Center, is persistently improving the capacity of officers and staff on new tactics for a membership drive that accounts for the emergence of 23 new branches within the last 3 years, says Babatude Ogun, president of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria at the union's triennial meeting.

Report: U.S. Solidarity Centre Decries Casualisation in Niger Delta | June 22, 2011
This Day Live | According to the Solidarity Center's new report, "Degradation of Work: Oil and Casualization of Labor in the Niger Delta," the dominance of oil has been a mixed blessing for Nigerian oil workers as oil industry jobs have unlocked the promise of natural resource wealth, but not without struggle.

Damning Casualisation Report in Niger Delta | June 19, 2011
International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions website | According to Nigeria's two major oil and gas unions, for every full-time oil worker there are four casual workers. The unions argue in the Solidarity Center report, "Degradation of Work: Oil and Casualization of Labor in the Niger Delta," that the shift away from permanent employment is an attempt to replace unionized employees with lower paid and less protected workers, as well as to transfer employment responsibilities to subcontractors.

End Rights Abuses, Obama Tells Bahrain | June 7, 2011
Democracy Digest | The regime’s “massive retribution” against pro-democracy labor activists is “very scary and ominous,” says Shawna Bader-Blau, Middle East and North Africa program director for the Solidarity Center, describing "members of parliament holding up pictures of demonstrators with circles around their faces."

Bahrain: Unions Fight Discrimination, Firings Even after Martial Law Lifted | June 5, 2011
Los Angeles Times Babylon and Beyond | Although martial law was lifted on JUne 1, workers in the Gulf state are still being targeted and fired and unions are under attack, the Solidarity Center's Shawna Bader-Blau tells the Los Angeles Times. Bader-Blau recently assessed the situation on the ground in Bahrain, where billboards posted around the captital threaten "no forgiveness" for the protest movement.

Our Agenda for Improved Service Delivery | June 2, 2011
Vanguard | With the support of the Solidarity Center, says Babatunde Ogun, president of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria at the union's triennial conference in Abuja, "the capacity of our officers and personnel has been generally improved on new tactics for membership drive which has resulted into the emergence of twenty-three new branches within the period under review."

Prized Oil Jobs, Degraded Work | June 2, 2011
Next | Nigerian environmentalist activist and poet Nnimo Bassey cites the Solidarity Center's report, "Degradation of Work: Oil and Casualization of Labor in the Niger Delta," concluding, "The continued casualisation of labour in the oil sector is an abhorrent arm-twisting system of exploitation that must be condemned and stopped."

Grant Helps Tunisian Women Activists Link up with U.S. Labor Women | June 1, 2011
Berger-Marks Foundation | Tunisian labor unions were "a key part of the democracy movement" and "continue to play a major role in the democratic process to form a new government," says the Berger-Marks Foundation, which supports organizations that help women organize into unions, "and what's more, the AFL-CIO-affiliated Solidarity Center has helped the UGTT to develop leadership and collective bargaining skills."

Union Leaders Arrested in Bahrain Crackdown | May 26, 2011
Labor Notes | The Solidarity Center's Shawna Bader-Blau and Greg Junemann, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers talk about their recent visit to Bahrain, where they met with members of the General Federation of Bahrain Trade Unions.

Worker March Blocked | May 26, 2011
Phnom Penh Post | “The $20, basically, they’re pulling out of the hat, so we’re hoping that’s just an opening offer, because it has no basis in law,” says David Welsh, the Solidarity Center's country program director for Cambodia, about a company offer of severance payment for workers at the June Textile Factory, which burned down in March. The workers are demanding $100 to $150 for every year worked.

Labor Trafficking in Troubled Economic Times: Protecting American Jobs and Migrant Human Rights | May 23, 2011
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe | Neha Misra, Solidarity Center specialist on migration and trafficking, testifies before the U.S. Helsinki Commission about structural failures, exploited by multinational corporations, employers, labor recruiters, and others, that lead to human trafficking and slavery of workers in global supply chains.

Striking Egyptian Workers Fuel the Uprising After 10 Years of Labor Organizing | February 10, 2011
Democracy Now | Interview with Stanford University Professor Joel Beinin, who, as the former director of Middle East Studies at the American University in Cairo, has closely studied the Egyptian labor movement for years. References the Solidarity Center report Justice for All: The Struggle for Worker Rights in Egypt, which Beinin authored.

A Historical Perspective on the Popular Uprising in Egypt | February 4, 2011
The Human Experience, Stanford University | Historian and Stanford University Professor Joel Beinin on the Egyptian labor crisis, with references and quotes from his report for the Solidarity Center, Justice for All: The Struggle for Worker Rights in Egypt.

Action Against Human Trafficking May Spark Conflict and Progress in 2011 | February 4, 2011
Kansas City infoZine | Link to story » The Solidarity Center's Neha Misra was one of three participants in a question-and-answer session Thursday, February 3, at law firm Patton Boggs LLP. Misra, Luis CdeBaca, ambassador-at-large to monitor and combat human trafficking, and David Abramovitz, director of policy and government relations at Humanity United, addressed a diverse audience of lawyers, human trafficking abolitionists, students, and others.

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