In recent decades, the global economy has grown rapidly. But as global production has increased, so too has global inequality. Inequality has skyrocketed. Many governments have prioritized the interests of multinational corporations over those of workers–including...
Search Results
Empowering Women at Work Focus of High-Level UN Meeting
Hundreds of high-level government delegates at the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) meeting at the United Nations in New York this month will for the first time discuss women’s economic empowerment and the role of labor unions as core to achieving women’s...
‘Without Worker Rights, All Other Rights Are in Jeopardy’
Labor rights are key to all human rights—and ensuring that the global human rights community champion worker rights is essential to addressing the many economic and political challenges throughout the world, according to panelists who spoke today at a United Nations...
Solidarity Center Backs Migrant Workers, Refugees
The toxic spread of xenophobia, racism, misogyny and fear marginalizes millions of migrant workers and refugees—further disenfranchising people whose jobs do not lift them from poverty, afford them safe workplaces or uphold their dignity. The Solidarity Center is...
Women Nearly Half of Labor Migrants in Africa
An estimated 998,000 African migrants entered South Africa between 2011 and 2015, says Mondli Hlatshwayo, coordinator with the Center for Education Rights and Transformation at the University of Johannesburg, where he researches community and trade union education,...
‘Fair Migration’ Conference to Address Worker Exploitation
Edias was 12 years old when he traveled from Zimbabwe to South Africa to look for a job in agriculture. Now in his mid-twenties, he and other farm workers had been working 12 hour days, 7 days a week, and paid less than half the legal minimum wage when they asked the...
Empowering Migrant Workers in Global Supply Chains
Many of the more than 150 million migrant workers around the world endure abusive conditions—and one of the most exploitative phases of transnational labor migration takes place before migrants even leave their home country: recruitment for work abroad. Forced to take...
Zimbabwe Informal Economy Workers: Bullied, Threatened
In Binga, a small community 400 miles west of Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, residents support themselves and their families fishing the vast Lake Kariba. With no industry in the area, they depend on the lake for their livelihoods. Yet they say they face constant...
Make People > Profits: UN Special Rapporteur
Millions of workers in the global economy have been disenfranchised from their rights, either tacitly or deliberately by governments, exacerbating “global inequality, poverty, violence and child and forced labor,” says Maina Kiai, United Nations Special Rapporteur on...
Women’s Economic Empowerment and Workers Rights
Globally, women are paid 30 percent less than men—but “imagine instead of corporations making 30 percent more off women’s labor, imagine if that 30 percent were coming back to our communities in the form of wages,” says Shawna Bader-Blau, Solidarity Center executive...
Building Alliances to Challenge Corporate Power
Women, people of color, indigenous and other disenfranchised and marginalized groups have been hit especially hard by the increasing concentration of transnational corporate power and escalating global economic inequality—but a new report showcases how women and...
Worker Rights Violations Rampant in Jaffna, Sri Lanka
The 2009 end of Sri Lanka’s civil war was an opportunity for workers to return to the security and protections of the formal economy, which had been destabilized by 26 years of violence. However, a new Solidarity Center survey finds that peace has yet to bring the...
Report: Workers’ Rights Weakened in Past Year
Workers’ rights were weakened in most regions over the past year, according to the 2016 International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) Global Rights Index. Repression of worker rights was compounded by restrictions on freedom of speech and assembly, including severe...
Solidarity Center Marks Launch of Global Labor Program
Dozens of congressional lawmakers, policymakers, union leaders, human rights and democracy representatives and other Solidarity Center allies gathered on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., yesterday to mark the launch of the Global Labor Program, a cooperative effort...
UN Consultation on Worker Rights Gathers Global Experts
More than two dozen worker, union and human rights experts from around the world gathered last week in Kenya to discuss some of the most intractable global labor issues: informalization of work, gender inequality, migrant worker rights and the erosion of workers’...
Morocco Government Assaults Spur Sit-in
About four thousand workers staged a sit-in outside parliament in Rabat yesterday in a show of popular protest against socioeconomic policies that are economically harmful to working people, among them planned pension reforms, a freeze on talks with civil society...
One Man’s Evolution to Understanding Gender Inequality
Nhlanhla Mabizela says he first truly grasped the meaning of gender inequality on a winter day in the dusty streets of Alexandra Township in post-apartheid South Africa. Cutting through an alley surrounded by houses made of iron scrap and plastic sheets, Mabizela and...
Peru Construction Workers Win New Pact, Rights
Construction workers in Peru are celebrating a new contract that significantly improves wages and benefits, and are hailing a new legislative order, which in part addresses ongoing violence against union members in the building and construction trades. The new...
Let’s Create a Global Civil Rights Movement
With a rousing call to action, Solidarity Center Executive Director Shawna Bader-Blau urged the more than 200 participants in the final session of the Solidarity Center's Labor Migration: Who Benefits? conference to "exercise our voice for a bigger push for global...
‘Shutting Doors Won’t Help Migrant Workers’
Highlighting the rampant economic inequality across the globe that is in part driving people to migrate for work far from their homes, Michelle Leighton, chief of the Labor Migration Branch at the International Labor Organization (ILO), provided a detailed look at the...