In Kazakhstan, the Solidarity Center supports the right of workers to safe, decent working conditions and monitors violations of core labor standards. Credit: Kazinform
In Kazakhstan, the Solidarity Center supports the right of workers to unionize in the face of harsh government opposition to unions, and monitors working conditions and violations of core labor standards to help support workers seeking to exercise their rights.
Since 2016, government repression has forced all independent unions to close, resulted in legal charges against half a dozen union leaders and threatened the physical security of activists and their families. At the workplace, hundreds of Kazakh workers are injured on the job and scores killed each year, yet workers who strike to improve working conditions can be fired, fined and jailed if courts declare their strikes illegal.
In a win for gender and pay equity in the former Soviet region of Kazakhstan, last month the country abolished a list of jobs from which women have been legally barred since 1932. Such discriminatory lists—which force women away from higher-paid work in traditionally...
A survey conducted this year by the Kyrgyzstan Federation of Trade Unions (KFTU), including unions representing mining and construction workers, found that laws against child labor in the country are inadequate and implementation is uneven, resulting in more than...
Aldaberdi Karimov, 42, who lives in a remote Kyrgyzstan village in the Batken region, did not want to migrate from his country to find work to support his family, including his daughter, Ak Maral, now 5 years old. But like many in Kyrgyzstan, where remittances from...
