Heng Rithy, a garment worker in Cambodia, says her factory has good working conditions and she can support her family because workers have a union. Credit: Solidarity Center/Shanleystudio
An estimated 450 million people work in global supply chains—in textiles, retail, fisheries, electronics, construction, tourism, transport and agriculture. Economic globalization has created benefits for consumers, business and suppliers, but the practice of sourcing goods and services from countries where wages are low and laws are lax often results in jobs that are insecure and informal, involving dangerous workplaces, forced overtime and even slavery.
The Solidarity Center works with unions, worker associations and other allies in countries throughout the global supply chain in countries such as Bangladesh, Honduras, Lesotho, Morocco and Uzbekistan to address poverty wages, dangerous and unsafe working conditions and limited rights on the job.
For instance in Lesotho, the Solidarity Center partnered with labor rights and women’s rights organizations to negotiate a worker-centered, precedent-setting program to comprehensively address the rampant gender-based violence and harassment denying thousands of women garment workers a safe and dignified workplace. The Solidarity Center is helping lead training in addressing and preventing sexual harassment and other forms of gender-based violence among 10,000 workers at five factories there.
Migrant workers comprise a large part of the global supply chain, traveling to countries such as Malaysia to work in factories and to Gulf countries as domestic workers. The Solidarity Center partners with unions such as the Central Organization of Trade Unions-Kenya and the Kuwait Trade Union Federation to advocate for policies and legislation that address the exploitation and abuse migrant workers face, and educate workers who plan to work abroad about labor laws and workplace rights in their origin and destination countries.
Garment workers and their union in Haiti are hailing a landmark settlement with a factory in Port-au-Prince that provided a total of $15,480 in back pay to 1,200 workers. The compensation covers 20 percent of the amount the employer deducted from workers’ paychecks...
The governments of Mexico and the United States have supported the growth of the Mexican berry sector by creating conditions for a cheap supply of labor and profit growth. Mexican field workers receive an estimated 12 cents per pound of strawberries sold in U.S....
Unionized workers on Guatemala banana plantations earn more, work fewer hours, face less sexual harassment, and have safer workplaces, including during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a Solidarity Center report. (The report also is available in Spanish.) “What...
This memo explains that under current WTO law, the ILO fundamental labor rights should already be protected under the ‘public morals’ clauses of the WTO’s General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). Download it...
All states are obliged under international law to eradicate forced labour within their own territories. However, these obligations do not require states to eradicate forced labour in other states. At most, states are obliged to cooperate with each other to this end....
"The Persistence of Private Power: Sacrificing Rights for Wages," a qualitative survey of human rights violations against live-in domestic workers in South Africa, is co-published by IZWI Domestic Workers Alliance—a network of domestic workers in Johannesburg that...
The ILAW Network, in partnership with the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES) “Toma Partido” project, analyzes existing legal frameworks on telework in Latin America, whether adopted before or during the pandemic. Download it here.
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The report identifies initiatives from around the world that enable migrant workers to obtain redress for wage theft through administrative and judicial mechanisms. These initiatives shift risks and burdens of wage recovery away from workers and onto government and...
