Podcast: In Midst of War, Ukrainian Parliament Attacks Worker Rights

Podcast: In Midst of War, Ukrainian Parliament Attacks Worker Rights

Even as war rages in Ukraine, with daily bombings, food and medicine shortages and tens of thousands of displaced people crowded in cramped public spaces, the Ukrainian Parliament recently passed a series of laws that attack workers’ basic rights on the job and undermine the ability of unions to freely function.

“Instead of having some greater protection of labor rights, greater protection of the people who are baking bread, washing dishes or cleaning the streets, since March we faced very regressive labor reform in Ukraine,” says George Sandul, a Kyiv-based labor lawyer, on the latest episode of The Solidarity Center Podcast.

Sandul outlined a series of laws parliament recently pushed through as martial law limited the ability of union members to strike or protest the changes, and as many unions and their members are focused on providing humanitarian assistance.

‘Unions in Ukraine have literally invested everything to support their country—union offices and labor halls have become shelters and refugee support centers. In some cases, unions have even donated all their money,” says Solidarity Center Executive Director and Podcast Host Shawna Bader-Blau.

“And in return for their heroism, sacrifice and commitment to country, big business and their allies in parliament want to slash workers’ collective rights to bargain for better wages.”

Listen to the full episode here.

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Bolt Delivery Drivers in Kyiv Demand Wages They Can Live On

Bolt Delivery Drivers in Kyiv Demand Wages They Can Live On

Despite often heroic efforts to deliver food under war conditions, Bolt delivery drivers in Kyiv, Ukraine, have seen a 60 percent cut in wages—and they are demanding the company take immediate action to boost wages and provide vehicle maintenance support.

Prohibited from striking while Ukraine is under martial law, the delivery drivers gathered recently at Bolt’s office in Kyiv to present the company with their demands, which include an increase in minimum payments from 84 cents per order to $1.36 per order, and a boost in per-kilometer pay from 24 cents to 41 cents to compensate for the rise in inflation.

“Our wages have been cut to the minimum,” a driver stated at the gathering. “Now they are trying to force us to work for pennies. It is almost impossible to feed one person on such a wage.”

Another driver said he must “work 14 hours a day, 27 days a month” to survive.

Ukraine delivery driver for Bolt in Kyiv, Solidarity CenterThe app-based workers also are urging the company to provide free or low-cost repair and maintenance for their vehicles, most of which are bicycles and motorbikes.

“Bolt Food does not compensate our work expenses in any way,” a driver said. “We bear the risks ourselves. We have to maintain transport at our own expense, we have to pay for fuel, spare parts—and all prices just skyrocketed but our wages were further reduced. These costs reach 70 to 75 percent of income at current prices.”

In addition, workers want Bolt to re-open several app features, such as one that enables drivers to see the client’s address before they accept the job. If the restaurant where they pick up the food is only a few blocks from the client, they only are paid for the short distance from the restaurant to the client’s location, even if they drive miles to get to the restaurant.

Earlier this year, Bolt Food riders in Lviv raised similar demands with the company after Bolt cut wages so drastically workers could not afford gas for their vehicles. Many Ukrainians relocated during the war to Lviv, a relatively safe haven near Poland’s border, and delivery drivers say Bolt took advantage of their plight as they desperately sought jobs to support their families. The delivery drivers won a wage increase July 5 that includes a boost in the amount drivers receive when delivering food during peak times, weekends, late hours and in bad weather, a feature Kyiv delivery drivers also are seeking.

Massive Job Loss and Attacks on Worker Rights

The company’s cutback in wages comes as more than one-third of jobs in Ukraine have been lost since the beginning of the war in February, according to an International Labor Organization report in May. The ILO projected job losses to reach 7 million, or 43.5 percent of the workforce, if the war continues.

Even as the war has decimated jobs and the economy, Ukraine’s parliament passed a law that would significantly erode employees’ rights in areas covering working hours, working conditions, dismissal and compensation after dismissal. The law makes it legal to fire employees who are on sick leave or vacation and allows employers to increase the work week from 40 hours to 60 hours, shorten holidays and cancel additional vacation days. A union’s rights also would be severely curtailed and employers would have the right to unilaterally cancel collective bargaining agreements.

Lawmakers say the legislation would apply only during war. But George Sandul, a lawyer with the Ukrainian worker rights organization Labor Initiatives, says unions and legal experts fear the law will not be revoked.

The legislation did not stem from the war. Similar proposals were pushed months before Russia invaded Ukraine, with the parliamentary committee for social policies and the Ministry of Economy pressing to radically change labor law to favor employers and restrict union rights.

Experts Share Strategies for Stopping Wage Theft of Migrant Workers

Experts Share Strategies for Stopping Wage Theft of Migrant Workers

A significant number of migrant workers worldwide are not paid for work performed, and legal remedies to recover them are few. But new policies have proven effective in ensuring migrant workers are treated fairly, a global panel of experts said yesterday.

“Paying workers their wages in full and on time is the basic bargain in employment relationships—when someone works, they do so in exchange for payment from an employer. Yet, for many of the 169 million migrant workers around the world this is not their experience,” said Neha Misra, Solidarity Center global lead on migration and human trafficking. “This is not a simple issue of wage arrears, like a clerical error. This is THEFT.”

Misra co-moderated Innovative Strategies for Improving Migrant Workers Access to Justice for Wage Theft, a panel bringing together migrant worker advocates from Australia, Canada, Colombia and the United States to share promising practices championed by labor and migrant worker rights advocates and adopted by governments and employers. Jeff Vogt, director of the International Lawyers Assisting Workers (ILAW) Network, was co-moderator.

“We need to educate and motivate governments to take action to remedy wage theft, including in supply chains,” said Laurie Berg, co-executive director of the Migrant Justice Institute which, along with Solidarity Center and ILAW, a Solidarity Center project, sponsored the event.

Freedom to Form Unions Key to Ending Wage Theft

Panel on ending wage theft for migrant workers, Solidarity CenterFew migrant workers are covered by labor laws, and an overarching solution to the scourge of wage theft is for governments to provide migrant workers access to these fundamental protections—and that includes the ability to freely form unions, an internationally recognized right that most governments refuse to extend to migrant workers.

Speaking on the panel, Bassina Farbenblum, Migrant Justice Institute co-executive director, ourlined additional concrete measures to address wage theft, drawing on examples undertaken in cities and countries around the world. These include shifting the burden of proof to employers in wage claims—such as requiring the employer to demonstrate it paid the worker correctly—to establishing financial repercussions for employers who withhold wages or ignore judgments favorable to workers. Migrant workers often fear deportation or other forms of employer retaliation if they file wage claims, said Farbenblum. Solutions include allowing migrant workers to change employers without losing their visa, and allowing them to file claims after they leave their job — by permitting temporary stay in the country to pursue wage claims or enabling them to file claims from their origin country.

Berg and Farbenblum detail these and more options in Migrant Workers’ Access to Justice for Wage Theft: A Global Study of Promising Initiatives, a 2021 study undertaken in partnership with Solidarity Center and ILAW. The report supports a new initiative coordinated in part by the Solidarity Center, the Migrant Worker Access to Justice for Wage Theft campaign, a global coalition working to provide remedy and accountability for wage theft.

The project launches a new phase in September, with the formation of a community of practice that will develop policy guides on reform targets to enable advocates to push for law and policy reform, said Berg. The guide will set out a variety of models and examples where reform has been implemented.

Canada, Colombia Examples to End Wage Theft

Panelists Amanda Aziz, a lawyer at the Migrant Workers Center in Canada, and Angélica Palacios Martínez at the Solidarity Center in Colombia, detailed specific initiatives in their countries to end wage theft.

In Canada, where migrant workers’ work visas are tied to specific employers in temporary migration schemes, rights advocates campaigned to establish an open work permit program in 2019 that applies to vulnerable workers with valid permits. The ability to move freely to another job allows them to escape abusive work situations, said Aziz. Similar systems in which migrant worker visas are valid only for one employer, such as the kafala sponsorship system in Arabian Gulf countries that ties migrant workers to their employers and guestworker programs in the United States that do the same, effectively deny migrant workers fundamental rights and fuels abuse like wage theft.

Martínez described how the recent influx of Venezuelan migrant workers to Colombia makes it easy for employers to exploit a vulnerable workforce. Many seek jobs through platform delivery companies such as Rappi, which effectively tells workers if they do not like conditions, they can leave because other workers will take their jobs, she said. While Colombian workers in the formal sector work up to 48 hours a week, migrant workers must work far more because they are paid so little, she said.

The workers formed a union, UNIDAPP, and took their demands for decent work to the labor minister. They also won a court decision that forced Rappi to pay wages they owed workers.

“We’re looking for equality of the treatment of all workers in the country,” Martínez said.

Also speaking on the panel, Ruth Silver-Taube at the Santa Clara University School of Law described how advocacy efforts of a wage theft coalition won a series of victories that included barring governments in Santa Clara County, San Jose, and other nearby cities from contracting with employers who have outstanding wage theft judgments.

Hundreds of Thousands of Tunisian Workers Strike to Save Their Livelihoods

Hundreds of Thousands of Tunisian Workers Strike to Save Their Livelihoods

Solidarity Center
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Hundreds of Thousands of Tunisian Workers Strike to Save Their Livelihoods
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Hundreds of thousands of public employees across Tunisia waged a one-day strike today after talks with the government failed to address the rising cost of living and sinking wages, even as it increases taxes and cuts social programs.

“The strike on June 16, 2022, is an opportunity for workers to affirm their unity, hold on to their rights, and defy the usurpation and threats, including unconstitutional and illegal burdens,” the Tunisia General Labor Union (UGTT) says in a statement.

At least 96 percent of public employees from 159 state institutions and public companies took part in the strike, according to the UGTT, which says the strike enabled workers “to express their anger at the deterioration of their working and economic conditions, the low wages and the threat to their livelihoods.” The UGTT, which represents nearly 1 million workers, says the government is “undermining the principle of negotiation and backtracking on previously agreed deals.”

Flights were cancelled as members of the Transport General union observed the strike. In Tunis, the capital, striking workers rallied at the UGTT building where they staged a sit-down strike, waving signs, “Do not neglect public institutions!” and “I love the country!” Members of organizations such as the Tunisian League for the Defense of Human Rights, Democratic Women, and the Economic Forum turned out to support striking workers.

Government Bailout at Workers’ Expense

Tunisia general strike June 16, 2022, UGTT, Solidarity Center, worker rights

Tunisian workers rallied at the UGTT building during the one-day general strike. Credit: Montasar Akremi / UGTT

The government is seeking a $4 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in exchange for cuts in food and energy subsidies, wage freezes and privatization of state-owned enterprises.

The UGTT has rejected proposed spending cuts and, with year-over-year inflation at 7.8 percent in May, is seeking wage increases for public-sector workers. UGTT also is demanding that state-owned companies, including electricity and fuel, not be privatized and wants the government to adhere to a December 2021 agreement in which it will negotiate with unions on policies affecting workers. UGTT also is calling for the immediate, case-by-case review and reform of public institutions.

“The current government is determined to make [workers] bear the consequences of its choices,” UGTT says, citing  the current and previous governments’ failure to address its financial crisis.

Global union organizations are backing the UGTT in its efforts to end the impasse with the government, with the AFL-CIO, the European Trade Union Confederation, IndustriALL and others sending letters of support.

UGTT’s last general strike in 2018 was part of a weeks-long wave of mass actions that resulted in a salary increase for public employees.

 

Ukraine “Trade Union Lifeline” Wins Anna Lindh Memorial Fund Award

Ukraine “Trade Union Lifeline” Wins Anna Lindh Memorial Fund Award

The Anna Lindh Memorial Fund in Stockholm awarded a special prize to the Trade Union Lifeline in Kyiv, Ukraine. The Lifeline is run by an informal group of primarily young trade union activists from key economic sectors such as railways, public service, food processing, delivery services and the platform or “gig” economy which aims to utilize union networks to quickly move humanitarian aid through the country to areas of emergency need.

Logo of Trade Union Lifeline, Ukraine, Solidarity CenterThe Solidarity Center and its Ukrainian partner, Labor Initiatives, are key participants in the Trade Union Lifeline, and the Solidarity Center’s Kyiv office is the main hub for its activities. Since the beginning of the war, the Lifeline has worked to link workers in key industries with charitable organizations and other civil society groups to move food, medical supplies, and other needed items to war-impacted communities.  The LI’s Donbas office in Dobropillia has been a critical hub for this support and has helped thousands of refugees in the region find safety in other parts of Ukraine.

“The youth network Trade Union Lifeline has, through admirable relief efforts in Ukraine, shown proof of real union solidarity, not only for members but also broadly in Ukrainian society,” says Lena Hjelm-Wallén, chair of the Anna Lindh Memorial Fund.

The Anna Lindh Memorial Fund annually honors individuals and organizations that help others and strive for a more humane and just world.  The Fund was created soon after the assassination of Anna Lindh, a Social Democratic politician whose two-decade career included service as a member of the country’s parliament, the Riksdag, Deputy Mayor of Stockholm, and Minister of Environment and Foreign Affairs.

The Fund’s $5,550 prize will be awarded at a ceremony in Stockholm on June 16.

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