By 4 a.m., Tamam Abdel Hafiz's colleagues are already at the Qalqilia border crossing, talking with some of the more than 4,000 workers who head for jobs each day from Palestine to Israel and West Bank settlements. Hafiz and three other members of the organizing team...
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Report Chronicles Rise of Domestic Worker Movement
Domestic workers toil often invisibly, in private homes where they often are subject to abuse. They typically have no protections under nations’ labor laws. Their labor is sometimes not recognized as “real” work. Yet despite the many obstacles they face, domestic...
World Day for Decent Work: Migrant Workers Often Exploited
At age 22, N. Naga Durga Bhavani left her small village in India for Bahrain, where she hoped a job as a domestic worker would help pay for her young daughter’s heart surgery. But when she arrived, after paying labor recruiters the equivalent of nearly two months’...
Informal Workers and Collective Bargaining: Case Studies from India, Georgia, Brazil, Liberia and Uruguay (WIEGO, 2013)
This report details a set of case studies on collective bargaining by informal workers in four different countries: Waste pickers in Minas Gerais state in Brazil, beedi workers in India, Georgia minibus taxi workers and street vendors in Monrovia, Liberia. The study...
Global Solidarity Highlights from AFL-CIO Convention
Trade unionists from dozens of countries are taking part in the quadrennial AFL-CIO Convention in Los Angeles this week—and the Los Angeles Times has video highlights of two international union leaders. Zahoor Awan, general secretary of the Pakistan Workers...
Workshop Women Workers Organizing: Examples from India, Brazil and Liberia
Workshop Women Workers Organizing: Examples from India, Brazil and Liberia Panelists • Geeta Koshti, Coordinator, Legal Department, Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), India • Sonia Maria Dias, Ph.D, Sector Specialist, WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment:...
Workshop – Mechanisms for Increasing Women’s Participation in Unions: Education, Policies, Quotas and Budgets
Workshop Mechanisms for Increasing Women’s Participation in Unions: Education, Policies, Quotas and Budgets Panelists • Sally Choi, Project Coordinator, Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU), Hong Kong • Khamati Mugalla, Executive Secretary, East Africa...
Workshop – Brazil’s Integrated Education and Solidarity Economy: Opening Pathways to Income and Citizenship
Workshop Brazil’s Integrated Education and Solidarity Economy: Opening Pathways to Income and Citizenship Participants • Ruth Needleman, Professor Emerita, Labor Studies Program, Indiana University, USA • Eunice Maria Dias Wolf, Secretary of Social Development, City...
Workshop Young Workers: Challenges Now and in the Future Workshop
Workshop Young Workers: Challenges Now and in the Future Workshop Panelists • Khamati Mugalla, Executive Secretary, East Africa Trade Union Confederation (EATUC) • Aruna Jain, Working America, AFL-CIO, USA Facilitator • Molly McCoy, Solidarity Center Regional Program...
Workshop Utilizing Legal Mechanisms to Fight Gender Discrimination and Support Women Workers Rights
Workshop Utilizing Legal Mechanisms to Fight Gender Discrimination and Support Women Workers Rights Panelists • Ziona Tanzer, Solidarity Center Law Program Counsel, Rule of Law • Matt Hersey, Solidarity Center Rule of Law Program Officer • Lais Abramo, Director, ILO...
Concurrent Workshops • Union Strategies to Increase Women’s Participation in Brazil: Perspectives from Industrial, Public and Service Sectors
Workshop Union Strategies to Increase Women’s Participation in Brazil: Perspectives from Industrial, Public and Service Sectors Participants • Mara Luiza Feltes, Woman Secretariat, CONTRACS, Brazil • Monica Veloso, Secretary of Work, City of Osasco & National...
Plenary Leadership, Transformation and Labor Rights: The Essential Vision and Role of Women
Labor Historian Dorothy Sue Cobble discussed women's long history of union activism. Photo: Matt Hersey Plenary Leadership, Transformation and Labor Rights: The Essential Vision and Role of Women Panelists • Dorothy Sue Cobble, Distinguished Professor, Department of...
Women’s Empowerment, Gender Equality, and Labor Rights
Plenary Opening Remarks and Welcome Keynote • Shawna Bader-Blau, Executive Director, Solidarity Center Welcome • Rosana Sousa de Deus, Executive Committee, Central Única dos Trabalhadores, CUT • Cássia Bufelli, Women’s Secretary, União Geral dos Trabalhadores, UGT...
Catalysts for Change: Workers Forging Democracy with Innovation
In Tunisia, women helped spur protests that ended autocratic regimes in their country and throughout the Arabic-speaking world. Zimbabwe trade unionists fought years of economic deterioration with innovative research. Across the Dominican Republic, domestic workers...
World Day Against Child Labor: A Focus on Pakistan Brick Kilns
The persistence of child labor—more than 215 million children toil worldwide, some half of whom are exposed to hazardous environments and suffer forced labor and prostitution—is a global shame, one highlighted each June 12 on World Day Against Child Labor. Further, an...
Colombia: Many Women Workers Face Job Discrimination
In Colombia, “even when there’s an improvement in the overall economy, women don’t see any improvement,” says Sohely Rua Catañeda. As a result, many women who are unable to secure formal employment are forced into the informal sector to support themselves and their...
Afro-Colombians Fighting against Discrimination at Work
Afro-Colombians are far likelier than other Colombian workers to earn less than the minimum wage and to be employed in jobs where they cannot form unions to improve their working conditions. And all of this exclusion “has a strong current of racial discrimination...
Working Women Empowered: Building Strength Through Unions
Women make up more than 40.5 percent of the workforce worldwide, according to the most recent data by the International Labor Organization. But their labor has not resulted in a similar increase in financial well-being. Far from it. Although women contribute 66...
Haitian Workers Speak out for Good Jobs
Three years after the devastating 2010 earthquake, Haitian workers are organizing to ensure that foreign investment and infrastructure-targeted aid provide not just subsistence-level jobs, but decent work and a living wage for Haitians. "We don’t want ‘Haiti Open for...
Kenya: A Commitment to Unionize Informal-Sector Workers
Millions of people around the world labor in the informal economy as taxi drivers, fruit sellers and in other jobs partially or fully outside government regulation and taxation. In Kenya, where the informal sector accounts for 80 percent of employment and contributes...