BUILDING POWER: WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP IN THE FIGHT FOR JUSTICE, DEMOCRACY, AND FAIR WORK

BUILDING POWER: WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP IN THE FIGHT FOR JUSTICE, DEMOCRACY, AND FAIR WORK

Tuesday, September 24, 2019 from 3:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. 

The Murphy Institute, 25 W 43rd St., 18th Floor, New York, NY 10036

 

Agenda

2:30- 3:00 PM: Registration

3:00- 3:20 PM: Opening Remarks

  • Gregory Mantsios, Dean of the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies
  • Laine Romero-Alston, Team Manager, Fair Work Program/International Migration Initiative, Open Society Foundations
  • Cathy Feingold, International Director, AFL-CIO and Deputy President, ITUC

3:20- 4:00  PM: Discussion I

Women Leading a Global Movement for Economic Justice, Democracy, Fair Work

  • Moderator: Patrick Gaspard, President, Open Society Foundation
  • Sharan Burrow, Secretary General, International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC)
  • Rose Auma Omamo, General Secretary of Amalgamated Union of Kenya Metal Workers (Kenya)
  • Liz Shuler, Secretary Treasurer, AFL CIO (United States)

4:00- 4:45 PM: Discussion II 

Women Leading from the Frontlines of the Global Economy

  • Moderator: Shawna Bader-Blau, Executive Director, Solidarity Center
  • Anannya Bhattacharjee, International Coordinator, Asia Floor Wage Alliance (India)
  • Libakiso Matlho, National Director, Women and Law South Africa (Lesotho)
  • Maricarmen Molina, General Secretary, Confederación Sindical de Trabajadores y Trabajadoras de El Salvador (El Salvador)

4:45 PM – 5:00 PM: Concluding Reflections

  • Amol Mehra, Managing Director, Freedom Fund

Sponsored by: Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation, the Freedom Fund, Fundación Avina, C&A Foundation, Humanity United and AFL-CIO, Solidarity Center and Global Labor Justice

Sri Lanka Garment Workers Stand up for Their Rights

Sri Lanka Garment Workers Stand up for Their Rights

Just outside Sri Lanka’s Bandaranaike International Airport, where more than 2 million tourists start their vacations each year, a different reality unfolds in the Katunayake export processing zone (EPZ).

There, thousands of garment workers take their places in factories guarded by electrified fencing to begin long days for little pay, forced to endure grueling production cycles with managers refusing to grant even unpaid sick leave. Sexual harassment and other forms of gender-based violence are a daily part of the job, they say, often with economic repercussions.

“Women are made to stand and work and when engineers fix machines, they touch the women,” says PK Chamila Thushari, program coordinator for the Dabindu Collective union. “When they complain, engineers don’t fix the machines, which means they can’t meet their quota. The only they way they can earn a good living is to hit the targets set by the bonus,” she says, speaking through a translator.

Garment workers are paid a bare $84 a month—or less, if they are employed outside the EPZs—yet apparel exports generated $4.8 billion for Sri Lanka in 2017, a 3 percent increase compared with the previous year. At 47 percent of total exports in 2016, apparel and textiles are the backbone of the country’s trade.

Yet only 2.8 percent of the revenue comes to the garment workers who cut, sew and package clothes for international brands, says Thushari, and most are malnourished, suffer from anemia, and struggle to feed and educate their children. The cost of living for a family of four—without rent—is $549 a month in urban areas like Colombo, near the Katunayake EPZ.

Workers Fear Reporting Gender-Based Violence at Work

Dabindu, Sri Lanka, Solidarity Center, gender-based violence at work, unions, gender equality, garment workers

Gender-based violence in garment factories is so common “people have kind of become numb to it.” Credit: Solidarity Center/Sean Stephens

Dabindu (drops of sweat in Sinhalese), launched in 1984 as a local organization to advocate and promote women workers’ rights, transitioned to become a union last year at the request of its members, says Thushari, who has been with the organization for 22 years. In addition to advocating for improved wages, the union is focused on educating women about their rights to a workplace free of gender-based violence.

As is the case at workplaces around the world, Dabindu has found one of the biggest hurdles to addressing sexual harassment and other forms of gender-based violence is women’s fear of reporting it.

Also, “because this happens so often in garment factories, people have kind of become numb to it,” says Thushari. Dabindu creates awareness programs and trains workers to become leaders on the issue. Because workers are fearful of speaking to employers or the police about abusive incidents, the worker-leaders share their experiences with the union, which takes the information to factory management, multinational brands and others so they may address the problem.

Importantly, it took time for Dabindu to develop trust among the workers so they would feel comfortable sharing their experiences with the union, says Thushari.

Connecting Garment Workers Across the Country

Since the end of the country’s 26-year civil war in 2009, which claimed roughly 100,000 lives, Tamil women, many widowed, have journeyed from the north for employment in garment factories at Katunayake and other southern areas with Sinhala majorities. Many experience difficulties because they do not understand the language, and garment factories often require Tamil women to meet higher targets, says Thushari.

Dabindu is working to foster better understanding between the Sinhala and Tamil garment workers by holding daylong “youth camps,” bringing the women together in a relaxed setting, and also is sponsoring trips for garment workers to war-torn northern Sri Lanka to enable women see the difficult living conditions there that are driving Tamil women to seek employment far from their homes. The union is expanding its program to offer women in the north a chance to travel to the south.

“Sometimes, workers are in tears when they see the difficult living conditions, and that brings them closer to each other,” says Thushari.

Siem Reap Trash Collectors Win Pay Boost, Union Rights

Siem Reap Trash Collectors Win Pay Boost, Union Rights

At Cambodia’s iconic Angkor Archaeological Park in Siem Reap, trash collectors employed by the contractor V-Green are back on the job with a boost in pay this week after 200 workers waged weeks-long lunchtime protests for better wages, safer working conditions and improved social protections like health care.

The company agreed to increase monthly wages by $15 in 2019 and $20 in 2020, which means “workers with the lowest wage could earn up to $120 [per month] next year,” local union president Tea Tuot told the Phnom Penh Post. The workers, most of whom are women, also will get a $25 per month pay boost if the agency governing the park renews the company’s contract in 2020, and additional increases in the following two years.

Tea, who says the company reassigned him to a worksite far from the union members, was returned to his previous position as part of the agreement.

After workers formed the Tourism Employees Union V-Green Co. (TEUVGC) in June 2018, they successfully pushed for a monthly wage increase from $71 to $80 and some social protections through the national social security system, including access to the national health care program and worker compensation benefits.

But further talks stalled late last year, and workers say the company began to retaliate against union activists, including Tea. The company has agreed to not impede union activity or retaliate against workers involved in the union.

Throughout the workers’ efforts to achieve justice on the job, the Solidarity Center provided the union, an affiliate of the Cambodian Tourism and Service Worker Federation (CTSWF), with legal and bargaining support.

Workers Don’t Share in Cambodia’s Booming Tourism Industry

Cambodia’s tourism sector earned $3.63 billion in revenue in 2017, an increase of 13.3 percent over the previous year. Yet workers collecting trash throughout the more than 400-acre site are not provided with protective gloves and face masks, exposing them to safety and health hazards like broken glass and hazardous chemicals. They also have little job security and were not paid overtime on Sundays and holidays as required by law.

In recent years, construction and restoration workers at the Siem Reap complexes also have sought to improve their poverty wages and highly dangerous working conditions, but like many workers in Cambodia, they face big hurdles when they seek to form unions and improve their working conditions, including retaliation, violence and even imprisonment, according to the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).

Cambodian workers have waged few strikes in recent years since passage of a 2016 labor law that significantly limits workers’ freedom to form unions and exercise their rights to collective bargaining and free assembly, and workers celebrating their victory at V-Green hope their victory bolsters’ similar workers’ struggles around the country.

670,000 Public-Sector Workers Strike in Tunisia

670,000 Public-Sector Workers Strike in Tunisia

Some 670,000 workers in Tunisia waged a nationwide one-day strike today to protest the government’s refusal to increase wages for civil servant workers. The strike follows months of intense negotiations between the Tunisian General Labor Union (UGTT) and the government, which refused to increase wages in 2019 because of its commitment to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to freeze public-sector wages and spending and balance the budget.

Tunisia, general strike, UGTT, wages, unions, Solidarity Center

Hundreds of thousands of Tunisian workers pack the streets of Tunis for a one-day strike. Credit: UGTT

Workers began the strike at midnight. By morning, hundreds of thousands gathered at the UGTT headquarters in the capital, Tunis, and at regional offices across the country, rallying to cries of “We want employment, freedom, national dignity.” The UGTT says all public service workers took part in the strike, including workers from state-owned enterprises.

Public-sector wages have failed to keep up with rising prices, leading to a decline in purchasing power. The UGTT says the monthly minimum wage of about $128 is one of the lowest in the world, while Tunisia’s Institute of Strategic Studies says real purchasing power has fallen by 40 percent since 2014. The UGTT points out that private-sector workers have seen a 6 percent pay increase for 2019.

In addition, the government’s proposed $60 tax increase would severely impact workers’ wages, social security and the prices of consumer goods, UGTT Deputy General Sami Tahri said at a press conference yesterday.

Only one flight left the airport, and the strike affected ports, public transportation and central, regional and local administrations. Vital care at hospitals continued.

Tunisia struck a deal with the IMF in December 2016 for a loan program worth around $2.8 billion to address an economic crisis that includes high unemployment and stagnant wages. During negotiations with the UGTT, the government delegation withdrew many times to consult with the IMF, according to the global union IndustriAll.

MWRN: A Champion for Migrant Worker Rights in Thailand

MWRN: A Champion for Migrant Worker Rights in Thailand

Reach for a can of tuna in your cupboard and there is a good chance it was packed by a migrant worker in Thailand. In southern Samut Sakhon Province, near the Gulf of Thailand, 6,000 factories employ some of the estimated 2 million to 4 million migrant workers, and similar numbers of factories crowd other provinces across Thailand. Fueling the country’s $236 billion export industry and helping make Thailand Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy, Burmese, Cambodian and Laotian workers often toil in canning and processing factories for low pay in sometimes dangerous conditions with few rights on the job. “Hands and legs are cut off by machines and [government occupational safety] officials are not doing good job of monitoring machines for safety,” says Aung Kyaw, speaking through a translator. Aung heads up the Migrant Workers Rights Network (MWRN), a nonprofit migrant worker rights organization based in Thailand, which since 2009, has provided a crucial bridge between workers and access to legal redress for unpaid wages, occupational injuries and other forms of workplace abuse.

Migrant Workers Need to ‘Band Together’

Thailand, migrant workers, unions, fish processing, Solidarity Center

The first step in migrant worker outreach is to ensure workers are aware they have rights on the job–MWRN leader Aung Kwaw. Credit: Solidarity Center/Tula Connell

Aung, who migrated to Thailand from Kachin state in Myanmar, worked in a shrimp peeling factory where he experienced firsthand the brutal conditions many migrant workers endure to support themselves and their families “The factory didn’t pay the minimum wage, it set the target by how many you peeled,” he says. “If workers were sick, managers forced the worker to work. We worked up to 12 hours a day with no overtime.” Recognizing the need for migrant workers “to band together,” he and eight other co-workers in 2009 formed MWRN, a Solidarity Center partner. In 2013, MWRN expanded to Yangon, Myanmar. There, staff trains potential migrant workers about their rights and the labor laws to which they are entitled in Thailand, and provides them with contact information for Myanmar’s embassy in Thailand and other key resources. In 2014, the organization opened an office in Myawaddy, Myanmar, on the Burmese-Thai border.

First Step: Workers Must Know Their Rights

The first step in migrant worker outreach is to ensure workers are aware they have rights on the job. Workers don’t know what the law is or how they can fight violations, says Aung. As part of MWRN’s education and outreach, its 21 committee members, who live in different regions and provinces around Thailand, visit migrant worker communities and talk with workers to explain the laws and their rights. Understanding their rights must begin before they start the journey to Thailand. Unscrupulous labor brokers scour rural villages for workers, falsely promise them high wages and charge them exorbitant fees, which they often struggle to repay on their low wages. Even if employers pay workers the legally required $10 a day minimum wage, it does not come near meeting the cost of living—for example, five pounds of rice, a basic food staple, costs nearly $2. Now aware of MWRN’s work, many often come to the office when employers violate their rights—an opportunity Aung takes to explain that because they are not alone in experiencing workplace abuse, they need to collectively join together to fight exploitation.

Migrant Workers Owed Millions in Unpaid Wages

Thailand, fish cannery workers, safety and health, unions, migrant workers, Solidarity Center

Burmese migrant workers head into a fish processing factory in Thailand. Credit: Solidarity Center/Jeanne Hallacy

The most frequent workplace issue involves unpaid wages. In one case, MWRN gathered evidence of systemic underpayment at a processing factory and shared its findings with the employer association, which found the company violated wage laws. (Aung says at least one employer group, the Thai Tuna Industry Association, works well with MWRN and cooperates on addressing workplace issues at its member employers). But even after the government labor office ordered the factory to pay the 1,850 workers $6.25 million in unpaid wages, the company refused. MWRN and workers waged protests at the plant, and the company ultimately negotiated with workers for $2.6 million. With its new offices in Myanmar, MWRN is investigating recruitment agencies and reporting those that violate laws to the Burmese government. The group also has begun reaching out to workers on Thai fishing boats. Aung estimates laborers on fishing boats receive two-thirds of the legal minimum wage, with no benefits. Investigative reports have shown fishing boat workers often are targets of human traffickers, and then held for years on boats in slave-like conditions. An estimated 15,000 people from Myanmar alone crossing into Thailand to take up jobs each month, making Thailand home to more than 55 percent of the region’s migrant workers who are helping drive the country’s economic expansion. Thailand is funding a $55 billion project, the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) Act, an infrastructure and utilities development program to connect land, sea, and air through high-speed rail links, ports, and airports. As Thailand assumes the chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) this year, migrant worker rights advocates say prioritizing migrant worker protection is also essential to ensuring the country meets its ambitious economic goals.

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