Nigerian Activists Mobilize to End Gender-Based Violence at Work

Nigerian Activists Mobilize to End Gender-Based Violence at Work

Solidarity Center
Solidarity Center
Nigerian Activists Mobilize to End Gender-Based Violence at Work
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After a coalition of unions and human rights organizations successfully campaigned for Nigeria’s government to ratify a global treaty on violence and harassment in the world of work, including gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH), they knew that was just a first step toward ensuring violence-free workplaces in the country.

Now, the hard work begins to implement the protections in International Labor Organization Convention 190, (C190), speakers said during a panel sponsored by the International Lawyers Assisting Workers (ILAW) Network.

Addressing Gender-Based Violence and Harassment in the World of Work ILAW publication cover, April 2023“The campaign does not stop at ratification. It must grow at the grassroots level, at the [factory] floor level, at the [union] branch level,” said Rita Goyit, head of the Nigeria Labor Congress (NLC) Department of Women and Youth and secretary of the NLC’s National Women Commission. “The struggle continues.”

Goyit was among speakers at a June 21 event launching a new ILAW Network report that analyzes the current legal framework regarding violence and harassment at work, particularly GBVH, and the status of international treaty obligations in Nigerian law. The report identifies key areas of reform to bring Nigerian laws and policies in line with C190 provisions and how legal practitioners can utilize existing law to seek justice for survivors of GBVH and other abuses at work.      

The report, Addressing Gender-Based Violence and Harassment in the World of Work: An Analysis of Nigeria’s Legal Framework for Conformity with ILO Convention 190, was authored by Chioma Kanu Agomo, a preeminent legal scholar and the foundation Dean of the National Universities Commission (NUC).

It finds that “the government should work with trade unions, women’s right organizations and other human rights organizations to create safe, gender-responsive, effective complaints procedures, including measures to address barriers to reporting. There is a critical need for strong mechanisms to protect workers who report violence and harassment from retaliation.”

Speaking on the panel, Agomo advocated holistic legislation “that mainstreams health and welfare issues, safety issues, to include issues arising from gender-based violence and harassment.” She noted that C190, which the ILO adopted four years ago last week, is broad enough to ensure that all workers achieve violence-free workplaces, including while commuting to work and at related events. The convention covers workers in the formal as well as informal economies. Thirty-one countries have ratified C190, with the Nigerian government ratifying it in November.

Mobilizing Workers, Union Members to End GBVH

Even before Nigeria ratified C190, union leaders, together with the Solidarity Center, began training workers at the sprawling Mile 12 market in Lagos, seeking to put into practice C190’s extensive provisions on preventing and GBVH in the world of work.

Union leaders trained 25 vendors to form and lead a task force on GBVH in the market. The task force developed a code of conduct to prohibit GBVH and create a mechanism for reporting cases. They distributed information leaflets and helped raise awareness among vendors about their rights to a violence-free workplace. This resulted in the identification of multiple cases of rape and sexual assault against minors, who often assist their parents in the market. Five people have been arrested and now are awaiting trial for allegedly violating the rights of children between 9 and 14 years old, said Agnes Funmi Sessi, NLC Lagos State Council chairperson.     

“People are now being able to know their rights, there are mechanisms to report GBVH and there are people trained in the market for emergency response,” she said. The effort is now expanding to another large market in the area.

The NLC also is reaching out to unions to ensure their constitutions and collective bargaining agreements adequately address sexual harassment and other forms of gender-based violence at work and are training gender officers to educate union members on their rights to violence-free workplaces.

The campaign urging the government to ratify C190 involved a broad, union-led coalition, said Afusatu Shaibu, national chairperson, Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC) Women Commission. Among those organizations is the Advocacy for Women with Disabilities Initiative. Women workers with disabilities face multiple hurdles when confronted with GBVH at work, said Patience Ogolo-Dickson, the organization’s executive director.

“It’s very difficult for a person with a disability to get a job, and when you are faced with speaking out, you fear losing your job and think it’s better to keep silent. Many don’t know about the need to access to justice and need to be educated on C190.”

The online panel was moderated by Jacquline Wambui Wamai, ILAW Network regional coordinator for sub-Saharan Africa, and a recording will be available in coming days.

Unions in Palestine Campaign to Enforce New Minimum Wage Law

Unions in Palestine Campaign to Enforce New Minimum Wage Law

After successfully pushing for a higher minimum wage in Palestine, unions now are campaigning to ensure the new law is enforced—and employers pay workers what they are owed.

A key part of the process is first determining the prevalence of underpayment. Through Solidarity Center support, the Youth and Campaign Committees of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) and the Palestine Journalists Syndicate conducted a survey of workers in low-wage jobs such as those in kindergartens, private schools, agriculture, textiles and media.

The survey found more than 62 percent of workers do not receive the minimum wage, a contrast to government assertions that 86 percent of workers are paid the new wage.

Sameer Abu Libdeh, 31, an education service worker from Qalqilya City, is paid $485 per month, and says the minimum wage law “unfortunately it is not enforced.

“Our demand is to get paid the minimum wage, which is 1,880 shekels ($520). We just want one official to show up and do justice to the poor [people] who get paid 1,700 shekels ($470). 1,700 is not enough. I talk like this due to the injustice I see among my colleagues.”

Hard-Fought Victory to Raise Minimum Wage

PGFTU spearheaded a successful campaign for a minimum wage boost, effective in January 2022, that for the first time in years enables workers to earn above poverty-level wages.

The victory to raise the minimum wage was hard fought, says Mohammad Badri, a telecom worker, union activist and executive member of the PGFTU, the umbrella federation for unions across the West Bank and Gaza.

 “The employers are very greedy. They did not commit to this resolution and they don’t want to give higher salaries to their workers,” says Badri, who described PGFTU’s successful campaign last year on The Solidarity Center Podcast.

Going forward, the union will discuss the survey results with civil society organizations and build alliances around the minimum wage campaign to increase pressure on government and employers to enforce the minimum wage.

With Solidarity Center support, the PGFTU also is connecting with journalists to put a human face on the struggles of low-wage workers. The union signed a strategic partnership agreement with the Journalists Syndicate to increase media coverage of PGFTU’s campaigns, including the minimum wage.

“So far, most media coverage is static. I mean it often focuses on numbers, statistics, ratios,” says Ayham Abu Ghosh, a journalist in Ramallah City at the Economic Journalist Network. “It is the time now to go beyond numbers, to humanize minimum wage issues by focusing and telling the personal stories of those underpaid workers.”

Rana Plaza Collapse at 10 Years: Brands, Bangladesh Government Must Do More

Rana Plaza Collapse at 10 Years: Brands, Bangladesh Government Must Do More

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Rana Plaza Collapse at 10 Years: Brands, Bangladesh Government Must Do More
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Ten years after the multi-story Rana Plaza building collapsed in Bangladesh, killing 1,138 workers and injuring thousands more, garment workers and their unions say that although safety has improved in some instances, much more needs to be done. And fundamental to achieving safe working conditions is ensuring workers have the freedom to form unions.

“When a trade union exists in a factory, the union committee, on behalf of the workers, can negotiate with management about the problems the workers face,” says Babul Akter, general secretary of the Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation (BGIWF).

protest, "I don't want to die for fashion"

Credit: Solidarity Center

In the wake of the Rana Plaza tragedy, which came months after a factory fire at Tazreen Fashions that killed more than 100 garment workers, unions and fashion brands created the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety. The Accord, which covers factories producing ready-made garments, has been successful in large part because it is a legally binding agreement. Accord inspectors have conducted more than 40,000 inspections and required 513 factories to comply with remediation.

Yet with more than 4,000 garment factories and more than 4 million workers, 58 percent of them women, safety hazards remain. A series of developments have weakened implementation of the Accord, including the ejection of the Accord Foundation from its office in Bangladesh and its replacement with an employer- and brand-dominated process in which worker voice is limited. And workers seeking to form unions to improve safety and health increasingly are facing employer and government harassment and even violence. Democratic unions encounter stiff resistance from authorities when they apply for the registration required to operate legally.

“The greatest challenges exercising freedom of association is the adverse mindset of employers,” says Rashadul Alam Raju, general secretary of the Bangladesh Independent Garment Workers Union Federation (BIGUF). “Whenever workers organize, the employers try different means, including harassing and using violence against the workers, filing false legal cases against them and terminating them to prevent them from organizing. The reluctance of government bodies to address the problems is the second challenge.”

Roadblocks to Forming Unions

In 2022, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) ranked Bangladesh among the 10 worst countries in the world for working people. In the garment sector, the country’s largest industry, industrial police have obstructed and brutally attacked striking workers seeking to form unions. In 2021, police fired live rounds and used batons and tear gas to disperse workers, killing six workers and severely injuring others.

Without unions, millions of garment workers who produce clothing imported by the United States and Europe are afraid to say “No” when asked to work in unsafe jobs—the same conditions that existed at Rana Plaza. Unable to collectively negotiate higher wages, garment workers often live in poverty conditions, even as the clothing they make accounts for nearly 82 percent of Bangladesh’s exports, making the ready-made garment industry vital to the national economy.

#RanaPlazaNeverAgain

Bangladesh, Rana Plaza, garment workers, Solidarity Center

Thousands of garment workers, like Mosammat Mukti Khatun (above, looking at the Rana Plaza rubble) who survived the Rana Plaza disaster, remain too injured or ill to work and support their families. Solidarity Center/Balmi Chisim

The day before Rana Plaza collapsed on April 24, 2013, structural engineers found cracks so severe in the building they advised that no one enter it. Yet factory managers threatened workers with the loss of a month’s pay if they did not return to work. Ultimately, building owner Mohammed Sohel Rana was arrested after trying to flee the country.

But for many of the workers who survived, the injuries they sustained were so debilitating they were unable to work again and support their families. Moriom Begum, a sewing operator at New Wave Style, one of five factories in Rana Plaza, was among many survivors whose stories the Solidarity Center chronicled over the years. Moriom remained pinned beneath furniture for two days before she was rescued. She lost her right hand, suffered constant pain and could not return to work. Yet survivors and the families of the deceased in most cases waited for years after the collapse to receive compensation.

“If there was a trade union, this incident would never have happened,” says Srity Akter, general secretary of the Garment Workers Solidarity Federation (GWSF), who spent days at the Rana Plaza site digging through rubble to rescue trapped workers. Garment workers like Srity long ago vowed #RanaPlazaNeverAgain, a phrase activists for safe factory conditions have adopted across social media and the name of site memorializing Rana Plaza workers.

To commemorate the 10th anniversary of the preventable Rana Plaza tragedy this month, hundreds of garment workers, trade union leaders and their allies in Bangladesh marched through the streets, and held a workers’ conference to demand an end to harassment in workplaces when workers seek to form a union, and called for reforming laws that allow systematic oppression of workers.

Brands, Bangladesh Government Must Do More

Bangladesh, Rana Plaza 2022 graphic, Solidarity CenterWhen Halima joined with her co-workers at Hop Lun Apparels Ltd., they experienced many obstacles before they successfully formed a union. Now general secretary of the Hop Lun Apparels Ltd. workers’ union and a member of Sommilito Garments Sramik Federation (SGSF), Halima says workers have one of the most successful unions in the garment sector and have signed several collective bargaining agreements that have raised wages and improved safety. The contrast between working conditions at Hop Lun and Rana Plaza is stark.

Solidarity Center, working alongside partner organizations in many key garment exporting countries, are calling on governments and brands to take steps to establish an environment where all workers in the garment sector have safe, decent working conditions and earn a living wage. To attain that:

  • All fashion brands should sign the International Accord and take responsibility for the safety of workers in their supply chain.
  • The government of Bangladesh should remove barriers to trade union registration, amend the labor law to come into compliance with international standards.
  • The Bangladesh Department of Labor should uphold its responsibility to protect workers’ rights by rigorously investigating cases of unfair labor practices. It should act swiftly to prosecute employers who violate the rights of workers to freely organize, join and participate in labor organizations of their choosing and to collectively bargain. 

Says Anju, president of Jesus Fashion Shramik Union: “No organization ensures dignity like a trade union does.”

African Union Leaders Join Forces in Historic Democracy Summit

African Union Leaders Join Forces in Historic Democracy Summit

Solidarity Center
Solidarity Center
African Union Leaders Join Forces in Historic Democracy Summit
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Dozens of union leaders from across Africa took part in the first-ever Summit for Democracy event on the continent March 30, where they discussed the essential role of unions in strengthening democracy and shared strategies on how unions can step up efforts to advance democracy through one of its most essential components—worker rights. Co-hosted by the Multilateral Partnership for Organizing, Worker Empowerment and Rights (M-POWER) and the Zambian Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), the day-long conference included interactive sessions focused on strengthening democracy and opening rapidly closing civic space in Africa.

“Amplifying the Voices of Workers to Safeguard Democracy in Africa” was an official side event of the second Summit for Democracy, a global democracy initiative co-hosted by Costa Rica, the Netherlands, South Korea, the United States and Zambia March 28–30, 2023. The second Summit showcased progress made by Summit partners on their commitments in the first year of the global initiative—M-POWER is one of the largest commitments made by Summit partners.

Said Joy Beene, secretary general of the Zambia Confederation of Trade Unions: “There’s no democracy without workers.”

See conference highlights in this photo essay.

Podcast: Workers Speak Out: Unions Are Essential for Democracy

Podcast: Workers Speak Out: Unions Are Essential for Democracy

Workers from around the world, including those exiled from Belarus, Eswatini and Myanmar for forming unions, striking and trying to speak freely, describe why democracy is important—and why unions are key to democracy—in a special episode of The Solidarity Center Podcast.

This week, high-level policy makers, including U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, are gathering for Summit on Democracy events in Washington, D.C., and in Zambia, where the spotlight will be on how to amplify worker voices to safeguard democracy in Africa and globally. (Register for an official Summit side event in Zambia focused on worker rights.)

“Workers know the importance of unions to democracy—and what democracy means in their lives,” says Solidarity Center Executive Director and Podcast host Shawna Bader-Blau. “The union movement is the strongest voice for democracy.”

One of the workers the episode highlights is Lizaveta Merliak, a union leader exiled from Belarus, who speaks out from Germany, where she and other union leaders were forced into exile.

“I’m one of a few trade unionists who escaped from Belarus after the liquidation and repression of democratic trade unions—unlike my comrades, leaders, and activists of democratic trade unions who are jailed and tortured in prisons.

“We must support the aspirations for democracy in every way we can and, at the same time, preserve and develop the idea of grassroots democracy at workplace. We will revive the independent trade union movement in Belarus, with the aim of creating a democratic society based on the principles of social justice and decent work.”

Listen to the full episode here.

Follow the Summit for Democracy events on Twitter @SolidarityCntr and on Facebook at Solidarity Center.

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