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.
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...
June 27, 2023 The Solidarity Center joins the U.S. and international labor movements in condemning the brutal murder of Shahidul Islam, a worker leader who was killed as a result of his labor rights activism in Gazipur, Bangladesh. Shahidul, a member of the Bangladesh...
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...
The ILAW Network is pleased to release reports on the regulation of telework in Mauritius and South Africa. The reports examine the impact of telework on a range of worker rights topics, including the regulation of atypical work, access to health and safety measures,...
The ILAW Network is pleased to release reports on the regulation of telework in Mauritius and South Africa. The reports examine the impact of telework on a range of worker rights topics, including the regulation of atypical work, access to health and safety measures,...
The ILAW Network has undertaken a research series on telework in Europe and Central Asia. National reports examining the regulation of telework in Moldova, Poland, and Ukraine examine the impact of telework on a range of worker rights issues, including work hours and...
