Jul 15, 2025
In Liberia, union halls are not just places where workers gather to discuss wages. They are where democracy comes to life.
Daniel K. Weah Sr., Deputy Secretary General of the United Workers Union of Liberia (UWUL), knows this firsthand. For years, he watched as Liberian women in male-dominated industries—from mining and energy to transportation and agriculture—were overlooked, unheard, and unsafe at work.
That began to change when the Solidarity Center, with support from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) program, launched the “Elevating Women’s Participation in the Workplace” initiative across West Africa.
“The Solidarity Center ILAB/USDOL program was so beneficial to us,” Daniel said. “It was good for our union operations and had a positive impact on the lives of union members across West Africa.”
The program sparked something powerful. Study Circles gave women the space and tools to grow their leadership, and gave men the chance to confront and reject norms that perpetuate violence and harassment against women. In factories and fields, on rubber plantations and in union halls, something shifted.
“Women were being motivated to participate in workplace leadership contests, roles traditionally held by men in our country,” Daniel recalled. “This program helped us, as trade unionists—men and women—understand how to properly address safety issues at work, making our workplaces better for everyone.”
The results were real. In April 2025, Lydia Togba was elected National President of UWUL—a generational achievement made possible by years of investment in inclusive leadership development.
“The election of a female National President…was a direct result of these efforts—a life-changing and generational impact on our movement.”
Daniel says that by making space for everyone, especially women and young people, the union itself became stronger.
“Making sure everyone is involved in the labor movement, not just the same few people, has made our union more democratic, more creative and more powerful. When women bring their ideas, when young workers speak up, when leadership reflects all of us, we are better able to solve problems, to organize, to win,” he said. “For example, women can use their own experiences as women to help us better negotiate things like maternity leave or safety protections against harassment at work—and it makes all of us better for it.”
But then, Solidarity Center’s funding from the U.S. Department of Labor’s ILAB was cut. The ILAB program ended abruptly. And the momentum—the hard-earned gains—now hang in the balance.
“The cutting of funding…not only adds anxiety amongst the women workers, but it has created a setback for the ‘Study Circle’ activities, which were motivational,” Daniel said. “We pray that the Solidarity Center will be able to regain some support and funding for the resumption of these activities.”
The loss is not just felt at work. These programs created ripple effects throughout communities.
“The knowledge gained from the training has a lasting impact that extends beyond the workplace into the communities, as workers share their learnings with family members and friends,” Daniel said. “This is an example of how our unions truly help make life better for people, not just at work, but in the communities where we live. Losing programs like the ones the Solidarity Center provides is a horrible thing for West Africa and our world.”
Daniel’s leadership journey didn’t stop there. He also completed a two-phase training with the Global Labor Leadership Initiative (GLLI), run by the Solidarity Center and Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR). The experience deepened his understanding of how democratic unions contribute to civic life and global solidarity.
“This GLLI program changed my world,” he said. “I understand so deeply now how so much of our work is connected—how what we do in our unions affects our lives in our communities, affects our world—and how we as worker leaders are connected all around the globe. Realizing the power of our collective voice and actions globally has made me a more confident, inclusive and strategic leader.”
Through GLLI and Solidarity Center support, Daniel built lasting relationships with unions like the United Steelworkers in the United States. Together, they now strategize across borders to hold multinational corporations accountable to labor rights in global supply chains—the same rights many companies publicly commit to but often fail to uphold.
“Sometimes we will be sitting across the table from companies, and they look stunned when they realize the information we have and the knowledge we have from organizing together as workers around the world,” he said. “This is exactly what they do as global capital, but they are surprised when we do it as workers.”
That, Daniel says, is why programs like GLLI matter—and why they are often threatened.
“This is the kind of power they don’t want us to have, workers organizing, speaking up, coming together across borders. That’s why we have to keep these programs going. If we want a real say in the decisions that affect our lives, not just at work but our whole lives—we need strong unions and strong leadership. That’s what real democracy means for us.”
Jul 4, 2025
In a groundbreaking opinion with global implications for workers and labor rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on July 3 affirmed that states have a legal obligation to protect human rights in the face of the climate emergency, including the rights of working people.
The court’s advisory opinion, requested by the governments of Chile and Colombia, marks the first time an international tribunal has directly linked the climate crisis to core labor rights and protections. It reinforces that climate change is not only an environmental challenge but also a human and workers’ rights issue.
The Solidarity Center’s International Lawyers Assisting Workers (ILAW) Network played a central role in elevating the labor movement’s voice in the process. ILAW’s legal brief, cited by the Court, highlighted how climate change disproportionately harms workers—especially agricultural workers, migrants, and people in the informal economy—and outlined the need for just transition policies rooted in consultation with unions.
“The recognition that governments must work with trade unions to develop and implement just transition strategies is a major step forward in international law,” said Jeffrey Vogt, Solidarity Center Rule of Law Director and ILAW Network co-founder. “The Court’s opinion makes clear that labor rights, including freedom of association, are essential to any climate response.”
Just Transition Is Not Optional
The Court held that all member states of the Organization of American States (OAS) are obligated to adopt strong measures that reduce climate risks and protect people from its harmful effects. Among its most significant findings:
- Workers and unions must be consulted in designing and implementing climate and labor transition policies.
- Governments have a duty to prevent and mitigate job-related health and safety risks from climate impacts, including heat exposure.
- States must proactively develop job creation strategies that promote sustainable development and protect livelihoods as industries evolve.
The Court cited ILAW’s argument that defending labor rights, including for the most vulnerable, is essential to achieving a truly just transition. This builds on longstanding international labor standards and aligns with International Labour Organization (ILO) guidelines.
According to ILO estimates, by 2030, productivity losses due to extreme heat could be equivalent to 80 million full-time jobs. Without stronger protections and planning, that number could soar even higher.
A Voice for Workers in Global Climate Law
The Inter-American Court received more than 260 amicus briefs from over 600 organizations and experts, but few focused squarely on the experience of working people. The ILAW Network’s submission ensured that the lived reality of workers—those most exposed to climate impacts—was at the center of the conversation.
ILAW also participated in the Court’s public hearings in Bridgetown, Barbados, where advocates emphasized how climate change is already disrupting jobs, threatening health, and exacerbating inequality for working people globally.
This ruling is expected to influence climate-related legal opinions and decisions around the world, including an anticipated opinion from the International Court of Justice. It sets a new standard for how governments must integrate labor rights and worker safety into their national climate strategies.
This ruling is also a clear reminder of how unions and worker organizations strengthen democracy. When workers have a voice—especially in legal and policy spaces where everyday people are often left out—they can help shape decisions that protect not only their own lives and jobs, but entire communities. It’s one more way labor movements play a vital role in making societies fairer, safer, and more accountable.
Learn More
Explore the ILAW Network’s recent report on climate justice and just transition laws to better understand the legal tools available to protect workers in the climate emergency.
Click here to learn more about our climate and worker rights programming.
The Solidarity Center and ILAW’s work on this case was generously funded by private donors.
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.
