Jun 26, 2025
The Solidarity Center, in partnership with the United Steelworkers International (USW), stands in support of all workers on the Firestone Liberia‘s plantation in Harbel whose low-paid and precarious labor brings raw latex from the plantation to tire manufacturing plants in North America and Europe.
“Now, more than ever, working people have to stick together and work together to win the changes we need,” says USW Vice President Kevin Mapp, who this week attended a series of union workshops at a critical juncture for Firestone Liberia’s contract workers.
The company’s contract workers–who work for lower wages with fewer social protections and benefits as compared to Firestone Liberia’s directly hired, unionized, workers–are poised to negotiate with their employers for a fairer deal. Although more than 90 percent of Firestone-Liberia’s contract workers voted almost nine months ago for union representation, their new union, the Sub-Contractor Workers Union of Firestone (SCWUOF), has yet to achieve its first agreements.
While Firestone Liberia has long profited from the grueling labor of rubber workers, the increasing use of lower-paid contract workers—often denied the rights, protections, and dignity afforded to unionized staff—raises serious concerns under international labor standards and mirrors global patterns of exploitation that have drawn forced labor allegations. This system effectively creates a second tier of workers whose vulnerability is built into the business model, echoing the very abuses international law is meant to prevent.
Safe jobs, healthy communities, fair wages, the ability to care for one’s family and a chance to retire with dignity are the dreams and aspirations of all working people in Liberia and around the world, says the USW.
Firestone Liberia’s contract workers’ efforts to negotiate a fair contract are fully supported by Firestone Liberia’s long-standing union for direct-hire workers: The Firestone Agricultural Workers’ Union of Liberia (FAWUL) has long argued against unfair competition with exploited contract workers, whose numbers are steadily increasing over time.
“We owe it to generation after generation of workers who have suffered to secure good jobs and dignity for ALL,” said FAWUL Chairperson Rodennick Bongorlee immediately after contract workers won their hard-fought election campaign for union representation last year.
Through a “buddy system” of mentoring and regular skills-training workshops, USW’s solidarity campaign is helping experienced FAWUL leaders transfer their collective bargaining and other union-building skills to SCWUOF.
“I’m so proud of the partnership among USW, FAWUL and the new Firestone contractors union in Liberia. We are indeed stronger together,” says Mapp.
By FAWUL’s calculations, some 3,500 full-time jobs were lost from 2019 through 2024 to Firestone-imposed transfers to contract positions, lay-offs and forced retirements. FAWUL in 2007 was awarded the AFL-CIO’s annual George Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award in recognition of the union’s “extraordinary courage” in successfully organizing more than 4,000 Firestone Liberia workers for the first time in the company’s 82-year existence in the country. Firestone Liberia is a direct subsidiary of Firestone Natural Rubber Company and an indirect subsidiary of Bridgestone Americas – part of the Bridgestone Group.
The Solidarity Center, in partnership with USW International, works with Liberian unions in key extractive industries such as mining and rubber to support them as they better serve their members and assist workers in forming unions.
Apr 2, 2025
In Tela, Honduras, where the only major employment is palm production, Iván is one of thousands of Hondurans who depend on his job to subsist. But until Solidarity Center training strengthened the workers’ ability to form a union and gain the strength to negotiate with their employer for decent work, they endured long hours and little pay to care for themselves and their families.
“If we have better conditions here, we won’t need to leave the country,” Iván says, noting his goal is for all workers to have decent living conditions and contribute to the country’s economic development. “That’s why we organize, to have better benefits than those offered by the law.”
Without continued Department of Labor (DOL) funding, palm workers in Honduras will lose access to essential training for achieving decent working conditions, making it easier for them to stay in the country.
This week’s termination of program funding for the DOL’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) eliminates how the United States enforces labor standards in trade agreements, protects American workers from unfair competition and combats child labor, forced labor and exploitation around the world.
Over the years, the Solidarity Center has implemented more than a dozen ILAB-funded projects across Latin America, Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe, including in key U.S. trade partner countries like Mexico, Bangladesh, the Philippines and Honduras. Cutting these programs harms U.S. workers, weakens trade enforcement and abandons the global fight for decent work and human dignity.
The Solidarity Center received $78.3 million in DOL funding for projects over the years. They have helped hundreds of thousands of workers build a better life for themselves and their families. Here are some of the workers’ stories in those programs.
Ending Forced Labor in Uzbek Cotton Fields
Cotton—in t-shirts, jeans and many household items—is so common, most of us do not give it a second thought. But for decades, millions of people, sometimes including children, were forcibly mobilized by the Uzbekistan government to harvest cotton for state-owned enterprises. Uzbekistan is the world’s sixth largest producer of cotton, producing over 1 million tons annually and employing around 2 million workers.
The project, now cut with the termination of DOL funding, sought to build on a 15-year effort that successfully eradicated systemic, government-imposed forced labor in Uzbekistan’s cotton supply chain. Through a multi-year global advocacy campaign led by the Cotton Campaign, of which Solidarity Center was a founding member, the government implemented reforms that, in 2021, brought an end to state-mandated forced labor.
To ensure workers who pick cotton continue working in safe conditions, the Solidarity Center signed a groundbreaking cooperative agreement last year with the government of Uzbekistan and other implementing partners to improve working conditions and prevent forced labor.
Ensuring fair labor standards protects U.S. consumers from unknowingly purchasing cotton picked as the result of forced labor, U.S. workers from competing with cotton made cheaper by exploitation and benefits workers in Uzbekistan.
A core priority of the new program would have been ensuring that all cotton sector workers have a written employment contract with enforceable work conditions. Employment contracts ensuring workers receive decent wages in safe conditions are vital, yet absent in many agricultural supply chains. This project aimed to both ensure the reforms to end forced labor in Uzbekistan are durable and help establish Uzbekistan as an alternative sourcing option to forced-labor-produced cotton from other countries.
Better Wages Benefit Mexico, U.S.
Credit: Arturo Left
In Silao, Mexico, Maria Alejandra Morales Reynoso painted auto parts for years alongside other auto plant workers forced to work double shifts with few breaks, even for the bathroom. Through Solidarity Center training and support, Morales and thousands of workers in Mexico formed an independent union, voting out a corporate-supported union that did not operate in their interest.
The union victory “gave people hope, hope that it was possible to represent workers freely,” she says. “We proved it’s possible to get organized and to fight for our rights and to leave behind the fear that we’re going to lose our jobs.”
The ability to improve their employment sparked momentum among other workers, and bolstered the ability of women to take a role in their jobs, as did Morales, now general secretary of SINTTIA, the union workers voted to form.
A reduction in the wage gap between Mexico and the United States, through authentic and transparent collective bargaining, benefits workers in both countries—by improving the wages of Mexico’s workers and disincentivizing companies from relocating from the U.S.to Mexico to exploit artificially low wages.
Over its 25 years of work in Mexico, especially since the enactment of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) and its mechanisms for labor rights enforcement, the Solidarity Center’s efforts have benefited more than 42,000 Mexican workers through USMCA resolutions upholding their rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining and obtained over $6 million in back pay and benefits.
In one case, workers at an auto plant in San Luis Potosí won a 30 percent wage increase through a USMCA ruling.
An informed, empowered, and effective agreement across North America is crucial to counter efforts to undermine the promise of shared prosperity for workers in North America. The termination of DOL funding will negatively impact workers in Mexico and the United States.
Decent Wages for 3 Million+ Mine Workers
Ruth Adriana Lopez Patiño, Los Mineros, Julia Quiñonez, CFO, and Mariela Sanchez Casas, Los Mineros, all founders of the “Mineras de Acero” (Women Miners of Steel) training program, participate in a tour of a gold mine during a training in February 2015 on gender equality and women’s leadership. Credit: Los Mineros
In Mexico, where Los Mineros represents more than three million mine workers, the Solidarity Center assisted the union in successfully utilizing the USMCA’s labor instrument (Rapid Response Labor Mechanism) in 2022 to achieve union representation and successfully negotiate a strong bargaining agreement with a 15 percent wage increase.
“Thanks to technical assistance provided by the Solidarity Center funded by DOL/ILAB, we were able to use the Rapid Response Mechanism—a tool that helped us achieve justice,” says Imelda Guadalupe Jiménez Méndez, Los Mineros, secretary of political affairs. “Today our contract is 60 percent more beneficial to the workers thanks to authentic collective bargaining.”
Although the Mexican Supreme Court ruled in favor of the mine workers in 2019, it was only through the assistance of the Solidarity Center engaging in the USMCA that Los Mineros successfully negotiated a groundbreaking salary increase and significantly improved working conditions.
Mine workers in Mexico benefited from key Solidarity Center support. Shutting down Solidarity Center funding for the programs jeopardizes life-changing gains in workers’ wages, benefits and conditions and increases pressure on U.S. workers who must compete with low wages in Mexico.
Safeguarding Job Safety and Health
“Pure drinking water, a first-aid box is mandatory at our workplace, as well as women should be paid like as male co-workers,” says one woman who works at a construction site in Bangladesh.
Basic needs—fresh water, medical supplies—and wages to support her family are now accessible through Solidarity Center training that enabled her union leaders to develop a list that included crucial workplace safety and health protections and successfully negotiate to achieve those goals. In a highly competitive sector, where employers can treat workers as dispensable, such lists are essential tools that workers at a grassroots level can use to raise key concerns.
However, DOL’s termination of grant funding means thousands of construction workers in Bangladesh will not have the impact of basic workplace safety and health protections and will have little ability to receive decent wages.
These are only a few examples of Solidarity Center has benefited workers and their communities through DOL funding. Its termination will silence these efforts and undermine U.S. commitments to American workers and workers worldwide.
Halting Workplace Danger
In the electronics industry in Malaysia, the seventh largest exporter of electrical and electronics products in the world, workers producing the semiconductors used to power a range of consumer products endure hazardous conditions and lack job safety and health protections. They often face hazardous conditions, such as exposure to toxic chemicals, which can cause detrimental health effects, including cancers, respiratory issues, and even reproductive harm, including fertility problems and hazards for pregnant women. Often, they are targets of forced labor.
A new Solidarity Center project, which began in 2024, sought to improve occupational safety and health standards and address workers’ access to social benefits such as social security, compensation for injuries, health care and other labor protections. Many of the workers travel from other countries such as Bangladesh, Nepal, Indonesia, Myanmar and the Philippines and face additional challenges in the workplace.
Solidarity Center training, funded by the DOL, sought to strengthen workers’ ability to take part in their workplace and their union and hold leadership positions to promote safe and healthy work environments by building strong and inclusive unions to effectively address OSH in the workplace. Solidarity Center sought to increase engagement by workers and worker organizations with government officials and employers to negotiate, address, resolve and prevent OSH abuses in the workplace through collective bargaining.
The programs also aim to level the playing field for workers in the United States by ensuring workers around the world are not exploited and abused in the frequent attempts by employers and governments to skirt the law in countries such as those in Asia. But the funding for the Solidarity Center program to address dangerous conditions for workers producing electronics in Malaysia, as with all DOL-funded programs in countries throughout the world, have been terminated.
Jan 6, 2025
App-based delivery drivers and drivers paid the minimum wage in Mexico celebrated the holidays with new legislative reform that recognizes them as workers and ensures their access to social security, accident insurance, pensions, maternity leave, company profits and a Christmas (holiday) bonus.
App-based delivery drivers and drivers paid the minimum wage in Mexico are now recognized as workers and have access to social security, accident insurance, pensions, maternity leave and company profits. Credit: UNTA
The law, introduced by Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum on October 15, passed with full approval by the lower house and the Senate, which voted in December. It recognizes gig workers as employees, entitled to worker benefits and protections under Mexican law.
Some 658,000 workers are employed across Mexico on digital platforms, with 41 percent earning above the minimum wage. The National Union of App Workers (Unión Nacional de Trabajadores por Aplicación, UNTA) campaigned for the new law, taking a key role in urging its passage. Because of its advocacy, up to 2.5 million workers, according to Mexico’s government, will now have access to important social protections and benefits.
Mexico app-based drivers took part in a media conference as part of the campaign to pass a landmark law covering platform workers. Credit: Rubén Piña
In a media conference with its partner, the Solidarity Center, UNTA members expressed support for the regulation and also highlighted areas for improvement, such as recognizing connection time as part of total work hours. UNTA is an affiliate of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) and part of its Latin American Platform Workers’ Network.
“This reform reaffirms what we have been saying for years: We are workers,” says the General Secretary of UNTA, Sergio Guerrero. “And after years of hard struggle, this historic achievement contributes to the dignity of digital workers in Mexico, Latin America and the world.”
Ensuring Decent Work for App-Based Jobs
With few formal economy jobs available, workers worldwide are turning to the platform-based economy to support themselves and their families. While the rapid increase in app-based jobs offers millions of workers additional avenues to earn money, it also creates new opportunities for employer exploitation through low wages, lack of health care and an absence of job safety.
According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), digital platforms have created new opportunities and blurred the labor relationship between employers and workers. As a result, the digital platform work model does not adhere to standards of decent work, or fundamental ILO treaties (“conventions”), especially those on freedom of association, collective bargaining and discrimination in employment and occupation. Digital platform workers often earn low wages and lack access to social protections, minimum wage protections, employment benefits such as paid vacation and opportunities for collective bargaining.
App-based drivers in Mexico waged multiple rallies in support of decent work. Credit: Iván Stephens
As in Mexico, app-based workers who drive motorbikes, bicycles and cars to deliver food and transport passengers receive no paid sick leave or vacation. They work long hours and rush between deliveries, risking their safety because if they do not, the app—via the company—punishes them by lowering pay. When drivers or deliverers are injured, they receive no compensation from their employers.
In Mexico, the law now addresses such issues, ensuring that workers have the flexibility to define their own working hours and requiring the employer—such as Didi, Rappi and Uber—to register workers in the nation’s social security program, covering occupational risks and providing access to health and housing benefits. Companies are required to register contracts with the government, which must detail working hours, income and algorithmic management rules.
Further addressing what workers describe as the company’s frequent abuse through algorithms, the law prohibits companies from charging for the use of the platform and obliges them to issue detailed payment receipts and respect digital disconnection outside working hours. It prohibits companies from manipulating workers’ income to avoid their classification as dependent on employers of digital platforms and blocks the collection of fees from workers for registration, use, separation or similar concepts related to the employment relationship.
In Mexico, digital companies now must guarantee the publication of algorithmic management policies and may not manipulate income to distort the employment relationship or carry out contractual simulations. The law also prohibits withholding of workers’ wages. The new law in Mexico is one of the most progressive in the world in regulating work through digital platforms, guaranteeing fundamental labor rights.
Dec 9, 2024
A four-year, regional, health care rights campaign led by the Organization of Trade Unions of West Africa (OTUWA) is expanding its success and influence in the region with Sierra Leone’s Finance Minister last month announcing a 2 percent increase in the country’s budget allocation for the health sector, from 7 percent in 2024 to 9 percent in 2025.
“The Sierra Leone Labor Congress appreciates the increase as a success of our health care campaign,” says OTUWA Executive Secretary John Odah, while noting that Sierra Leone’s government has not met the 15 percent minimum annual budgetary health allocation to which African heads of state agreed in the landmark 2001 Abuja Declaration.
Like many countries in the region, in the context of mounting national debt, multinational tax dodging and illicit financial flows, Sierra Leone’s government is struggling to provide essential services to its citizens, including accessible health care.
Sierra Leone’s health care funding increase builds on the success of OTUWA’s “Health Care Is a Human Right” campaign this year in Nigeria, where the federal government in April announced a disbursement of almost $70 million to bolster the country’s health infrastructure.
Given that more than 80 percent of West Africa’s working people earn their living in poorly paid and uncertain informal-sector jobs, lack of access to state-provided health care or health insurance is placing an unfair financial burden on low‐income individuals and households, say unions. A United Nations report noted that 381 million people, or almost 5 percent of the world’s population, were pushed into extreme poverty in 2019 by out-of-pocket health expenditures.
OTUWA’s health care rights campaign unites West Africa’s unions in a fight for equal and fair health care access for all. Campaign participants, which include OTUWA affiliates and national health care unions, have been advocating since 2020 for the protection of health worker rights and effective, accessible health care for all with national and continent-wide African Union legislators and policymakers, including the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Parliament. An OTUWA survey of 700 health workers living in Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo provided a window into the region’s health-sector shortcomings and presented a raft of recommendations that included increased funding for the health care sector across the region. This year, the campaign expanded its influence through an alliance with Public Services International, a global union federation that represents 30 million workers in 154 countries and, to preserve public resources, added good governance to its demands.
“We celebrate with our Sierra Leonean brothers and sisters and will continue to support unions that are demanding more investment by governments in the health of their citizens,” says Solidarity Center Africa Regional Program Director Christopher Johnson.
OTUWA represents trade union national centers in the 15 West African countries comprising ECOWAS. None of West Africa’s signatory governments–required by ECOWAS Fundamental Principles to promote and protect human rights in accordance with the African Union (AU) Charter on Human and People’s Rights, including provision of social protections such as health care–are implementing the 15 percent minimum annual budgetary health allocation.
Nov 12, 2024
Drivers in Cebu, Philippines, are staying strong as Foodpanda challenges a ruling by a government agency that determined they are employees of the corporation and must receive around $128,000 in lost wages.
Foodpanda is appealing the decision the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) issued in September that required the company to reinstate a 2018–2020 compensation plan that cut driver’s pay by more than half. The ruling also stated that “with no ability to negotiate or alter their fees, riders are more like employees receiving a standard wage rate than independent contractors.”
Foodpanda is challenging a court ruling determining drivers in Cebu are employees who must receive decent pay, safety and health protections and health care.
Credit: Solidarity Center / Miguel Antivola
As with other app-based rideshare and passenger delivery corporations around the world, Foodpanda seeks to classify workers as independent contractors to avoid labor laws requiring pay, safety and health protections, and health care.
“For the five years I’ve worked for Foodpanda, they haven’t offered any type of leave or financial support for medicine,” said Abraham Monticalbo, Jr. The RIDERS-SENTRO (National Union of Food Delivery Riders) member described his experiences working for a company that is not required to adhere to labor protections: “We only get paid when we get an order. If you don’t get bookings, you don’t get paid.”
Foodpanda’s appeal “is just a small amount for the company, yet they’re being stingy with the riders. It’s clear that they don’t really care about our well-being,” Monticalbo said at a union press conference.
Seeking Fairness on the Job
The NLRC ruling on Foodpanda and Delivery Hero Logistics Philippines, Inc., would mean “we can finally receive our earnings that should have long benefited our families and ourselves,” Monticalbo said. “Because of our win, we receive justice.”
The Cebu Foodpanda union chapter of RIDERS-SENTRO has sought fair wages and transparency in the Foodpanda app on scheduling, compensation and suspension. In April, more than 200 Filipino app-based delivery riders took part in a unity ride around Cebu province to protest wage theft.
The Foodpanda app–via the company–sets the rules and is unaccountable to drivers, unilaterally updating acceptance rates, special hours and more. “If you are suddenly tagged for suspension and you follow due process in the app as we were instructed, you will get suspended before they take any action,” said Monticalbo. “Even if you do it right, the suspension is still ongoing. We can’t do anything about it since the tag is still in the system.”
Like Foodpanda, many app-based companies often deploy a “bait-and-switch” tactic, offering benefits to riders only to change the terms later.
“Management treated us well before. If I can compare it to what’s happening now, it’s so far off,” said Monticalbo. Drivers still do their job “because they already left their previous jobs. If they don’t deliver, they don’t earn.”
After the ruling supporting drivers, RIDERS-SENTRO invited the company to enter into discussions for a collective bargaining agreement. With a union, said Monticalbo, the riders are confident of their ability to win their rights on the job even with Foodpanda’s appeal
“Because of the union, we have the fighting spirit for this. We realize our power, our rights.”
Oct 28, 2024
More than 200 International Lawyers Assisting Workers Network (ILAW) members gathered in Casablanca, Morocco, October 9 to 11 at their 2024 Global Conference to share ideas and to collaborate on legal strategies to promote and defend worker rights.
The Solidarity Center established the ILAW Network in 2018 as a way for pro-labor lawyers worldwide to bring together legal practitioners and scholars in an exchange of ideas and information in order to best represent the rights and interests of workers and their organizations wherever they may be.
ILAW lawyers working together have taken legal strategies that are successful in one country and deploy them elsewhere. In doing so, they have set new legal precedents that build a stronger foundation for the expansion of worker rights around the globe.
Credit: Mosa’ab Elshamy
Solidarity Center Executive Director Shawna Bader-Blau welcomed attendees, describing the network of over 1,300 members in more than 90 countries as “uniquely situated to take on global corporations suppressing worker rights.”
She cited the successful advocacy of women labor lawyers for new International Labor Organization (ILO) treaties, like Convention 189 on domestic workers and Convention 190 on violence and harassment.
Solidarity Center Rule of Law Director and ILAW Network Chair Jeffrey Vogt laid out the conference’s purpose. “Around the world, the rights of workers and unions are under attack. Employers are well-resourced and coordinated in their efforts to shape law and policy. It is essential that workers and unions do the same. Through ILAW, we can learn from each other, build from successes and failures, and strengthen our impact through legal solidarity.”
Credit: Mosa’ab Elshamy
The importance of interconnectedness was woven throughout many plenary sessions and discussions. Networking, learning from and collaborating across countries and regions was a key part of the conference, as attendees talked about the commonalities of their work.
The opening plenary, moderated by Solidarity Center’s Rule of Law Deputy Director Monika Mehta, focused on the impact of technology in the world of work, including but not only digital platform workers, from Amazon warehouses workers to content moderators for major social media firms.
Panelist Liz Lenjo described the content moderators in Kenya who filed a lawsuit against Meta (the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and Threads) and Sama, the local contractor, citing poor working conditions, union busting and inadequate mental health support.
These workers were hired to screen posts, videos and messages for Facebook and remove harmful or offensive content. Workers spent hours viewing violent and disturbing images and videos. They were left on their own to deal with the psychological trauma. In a landmark ruling, the Kenyan court determined it had jurisdiction over Meta.
Credit: Mosa’ab Elshamy
Sandra Muñoz discussed how women in Colombia’s parliament recently passed legislation to harassment in the workplace and linked the fight for equality to equality for all. “Unless we can overcome inequality,” Muñoz said, “we can’t overcome inequality as a whole.”
Kayan Leung also described successful litigation she undertook in South Africa to establish parity in paid parental leave in order that the responsibility of care does not default to women. The ILAW Network filed an amicus brief in that case.
During the panel on Just Transition, Angelica Maria Palacios Martinez spoke about the efforts to get Colombia’s government to recognize trade unions’ essential role in Just Transition and protecting the whole population. “From the trade union world, we have called out the government to recognize us as a key player, she said, “so that these public policies are focused on protecting the entire population, and in particular, protecting the workers.”
Abdullah Nahid of the Maldives, one of the countries most affected by climate change, described union efforts to support workers in the tourism and fisheries sector.
On the panel on the informal economy, Madhulika Tatigotla discussed the growth of the informal economy in India. India’s informal economy continues to grow, as the formal sector continues to informalize as, for example, 40 percent of factory workers are now on temporary contracts. Recently, workers and their legal advocates developed a comprehensive draft law for workers in the informal economy to extend labor rights and benefits.
In the final right to strike plenary, Paapa Danquah noted the increasing international threats to the right to strike, linking it to civil liberties. “The attack on the right to strike on the international level is the first step to taking away the right to strike everywhere,” Danquah said. “Whenever you see attacks on the right to strike, there are also attacks on collective bargaining and civil liberty.” He described how the ITUC was involved in litigation before the International Court of Justice to protect the right to strike as a principle of international law.
As the conference ended, attendees discussed priorities for the coming year, from more collaboration between all members to deepening national and regional labor law networks, cross-pollination between ILAW regions, increasing engagement with social movements and Indigenous communities in order to support union growth. Attendees left the conference energized and committed to forging a robust labor law network for a stronger global labor movement.
