Sorting olives, picking peaches and cultivating fields across a vast agro-industrial complex outside Meknes, Morocco, Hayat Khomssi says women workers like her once did not have access to higher-skilled jobs and leadership positions. But after she and her co-workers...
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1,000 Colombia Palm Oil Workers Win Pre-Agreement
More than 1,000 palm oil workers in Colombia ended a 20-day strike this week after winning a preliminary agreement with the Indupalma plantation that takes first steps toward formalizing their work status. As subcontracted workers, the palm oil workers have no rights...
Palm Oil Workers Strike for Recognition as Employees
More than 1,000 palm oil workers on strike outside San Alberto, Colombia are seeking recognition as employees. As subcontracted workers, they have no rights under Colombia’s labor laws, including freedom of association and the right to negotiate working conditions....
Striking Honduras Palm Oil Workers Attacked, Threatened
Several striking palm oil workers in Honduras were physically assaulted by private security guards and threatened with prison this week as they peacefully walked a picket line at company offices in El Progreso, according to the agro-industrial workers’ union...
Forum Opens on Promoting Women Workers’ Rights
To promote the rights of women workers, especially women domestic workers and women farm workers, it is essential to seek solutions to build women's capacity to defend their rights to equality, decent work and an end to violence and abuse, according to Hind Cherrouk,...
Joining Across Borders: Solidarity Center Celebrates 20!
Some 300 allies, coalition partners and sponsors of the Solidarity Center packed the Longview Gallery in Washington, D.C., last night to celebrate the organization’s 20th anniversary. The day began with a book launch and discussion on informal workers and collective...
UN Report: Freedom of Association Key to Democracy
Freedom of peaceful assembly and association lie at the core of any functioning democratic system, according to a report by the new Annalisa Ciampi, the new United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association. “It is...
Decent Work Day: Focus on Living Wages
When Mwahamisi Josiah Makori, a Kenyan mother of three who worked as a domestic worker in Saudi Arabia, first arrived at her new employer’s house, she was given only 20 minutes before she began work. After that, she began a three-month period which involved hard...
Kenya’s Jayne Njoki Helps Lead Future of Young Workers
As a young woman working in her company’s IT department, Jayne Muthoni Njoki was frustrated by what she says were employer attempts to push her around because of her youth and sex. But rather than quit her job, which she contemplated, she ran for a leadership position...
Surveys Show Challenges of Workers with Disabilities
Sana Sabheni, 32, is confined to a wheelchair at her home in a four-story apartment complex in Tunisia. She does not leave her apartment for months at a time because her building does not have an elevator. Without resources to enable her mobility, Sabheni, who lives...
‘Imagine If Migrant Workers Had Labor Rights’
“Why does being low-wage and a migrant mean being sentenced to a lifetime of being separated from your family? It shouldn’t and doesn’t have to,” says Solidarity Center Executive Director Shawna Bader-Blau. Speaking at a United Nations meeting on migration today in...
Guatemalan Farmer’s Murder Reveals Vast Employer Theft
The recent murder of a retired Guatemalan farmer and the violent attack against two others while holding a peaceful protest at their former employer, the San Gregorio Piedra Parada Farm, revealed a decades-long failure by the agribusiness to pay into the country’s...
U.S. Women Activists Connect with Kenyan Women Workers
Five black women activists representing the U.S. labor movement, the Black Women’s Roundtable and other causes working to promote women’s empowerment and gender equality, traveled to Kenya last week to connect with union women from the Central Organization of Trade...
Low-Wage Workers Risk Lives in Cambodia’s Building Boom
In Cambodia's booming construction industry, where up to 250,000 workers toil on building projects during peak season, laborers wear sandals or flip-flops and cloth gloves, if they have gloves at all, their heads covered only with towels or soft hats they bring to...
Workers Bring Colombia’s Largest Port to a Halt
Workers in Buenaventura, Colombia, who are waging an indefinite work stoppage to call attention to the lack of jobs, good wages and basic public services in their community, have brought port operations and local commerce to a halt. As the country’s largest seaport,...
In Grim Times, Brazil Young Workers Take Charge of Future
Among the millions of Brazilians who waged a recent 24-hour general strike to protest proposed legislation that would weaken labor regulations, many were young workers, some newly mobilized by the government’s attempts to impose drastic cuts on pensions, salaries and...
May Day 2017: Standing up for Worker Rights across the Globe
From Cambodia to Zimbabwe, in Serbia and Honduras, hundred of thousands of workers and their families are celebrating International Workers Day, honoring the dignity of work and the accomplishments of the labor movement in defending human rights, job stability, fair...
Arif: From Child Garment Worker to Safety Trainer
As we approach April 24, the fourth anniversary of the Rana Plaza building collapse in Bangladesh that killed more than 1,130 garment workers and severely injured thousands more, the Solidarity Center is posting first-person stories of three garment worker union...
Panel: Solidarity Key to Addressing Global Power
Understanding the scale and depth of corporate power’s impact on workers, the environment and public services—and channeling that knowledge into joint action to coordinate and maximize an effective response—is crucial to decreasing economic inequality and reclaiming...
‘We Can’t Wait for Men to Help Us. We Women Have to Do It’
Women’s economic empowerment is linked to achieving broader labor rights for workers around the globe and women must join together no matter what their interests or jobs to bring about gender equality at work, panelists said today at an AFL-CIO panel in New York City....