The Solidarity Center works to ensure all workers, such as Bangladesh garment workers, have access to their legal workplace rights. Credit: Solidarity Center/Balmi Chisim
The Solidarity Center works to ensure that all workers have rights protected under international law and have access to effective legal remedies if those rights are violated.
The Solidarity Center works with workers, unions and other organizations around the world to rewrite the rules so workers can form unions and take collective action to promote their rights and be free from exploitation. The Solidarity Center has assisted workers and unions in countries such as Bangladesh, Cambodia, Guatemala, Myanmar, Thailand and Ukraine to analyze legislation and develop strategies to defeat repressive legislation and promote laws and regulations consistent with international law.
Our work supports novel litigation at the national and regional levels to expand rights to workers and unions. For example, the Solidarity Center has supported constitutional litigation to ensure domestic workers in South Africa have access to the national workers compensation fund, and is working with lawyers in Bangladesh to support workers in challenging the use of false criminal charges to dismiss and silence workers. The Solidarity Center also supports efforts in regional human rights courts to promote the rights of informal economy workers in Africa and to hold governments accountable for anti-union violence in the Americas.
The Solidarity Center also is working to build accountability for multinational firms in global supply chains that remain largely beyond the reach of the law in countries where their suppliers are located and in their home countries. The lack of accountability is a major driver of worker exploitation in supply chains, including wage theft, unsafe workplaces, violence against workers and attacks against unions.
Educating workers on their rights and how to use them in the workplace is also a key component of our work. Through the International Lawyers Assisting Workers Network (ILAW), we are building a legal community and increasing the capacity of lawyers and activists to effectively use domestic, regional and international laws and institutions. The ILAW Network brings together more than 400 lawyers in some 55 countries.
For many job seekers, joining the ranks of delivery drivers or other app-based workers is sold as entrepreneurship–a way to make money as an independent contractor and be their own boss. But the reality is much different, as workers from Africa to Latin America have...
It has been widely reported that when the COVID-19 pandemic began, governments and employers were ill-informed, ill-prepared and in many cases willing to risk the lives of workers for profits-leading to occupational health and safety failures globally. This issue...
The Solidarity Center Global Impact report highlights the Solidarity Center's support of unions and civil society organizations in ending gender-based violence (GBVH) at work and showcases key outcomes, including a landmark agreement to address GBVH in Lesotho garment...
The report outlines the current legal framework in Nigeria regarding violence and harassment at work; examines key provisions of C190 and how to amend laws to fully realize these protections; and identifies opportunities for legal practitioners to utilize existing...
A survey of more than 600 workers with disabilities in Nigeria conducted by the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC) Women Commission and the Solidarity Center in collaboration with Nigerian unions and disability rights organizations, finds that most workers...
A report by Workers’ Rights Watch tracks progress on a precedent-setting, worker-centered program in Lesotho garment factories to prevent gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH) of garment workers producing jeans for the global market. The Lesotho Agreements...
This report looks at the domestic, regional and international legal frameworks regulating domestic work in nine countries: Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda. Download it here.
In 2022, the Solidarity Center marked a quarter century of supporting embattled workers, advocating and litigating for change, and celebrating worker rights advances in troubled times. As crackdowns on fundamental civil rights intensify around the world, workers and...
