Cambodia’s draft minimum wage law would prohibit unions and other civil-society organizations from contesting the country’s minimum wage and would go so far as to restrict their ability to even conduct research to craft minimum wage options, according to a legal analysis by the Solidarity Center and its partners.
“As it stands, the draft could potentially criminalize all forms of protest in relation to the minimum wage, which has been the motivation for some of the biggest demonstrations in recent memory,” says Chak Sopheap, executive director of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR), which analyzed the draft.
“It is an affront to the constitutionally protected fundamental freedoms of expression, association and assembly, and must not proceed,” he says. (The analysis is available in English and Khmer.)
The law also would exclude many categories of workers, including domestic workers, civil servants, some transportation workers and workers in the informal economy.
Draft Law Blocks Worker & Union Input
“The government has routinely criminalized legitimate trade union conduct, in violation of international human rights law. The vague prohibition of ‘illegal acts’ in regard to pressuring the government over the minimum wage would seriously undermine the legitimate work of labor activists,” explains Jeff Vogt, legal director of the Solidarity Center’s rule of law department.
The analysis also notes that the draft law’s processes for wage-setting do not guarantee union participation and give significant discretion to the labor minister to set minimum wages based on employment sector and geographic region, which threatens “to undercut the objectives and spirit of the law.”
Minimum Wage for Garment Workers Not a Living Wage
A 2015 study of garment workers and their expenditures, conducted by labor rights groups, including the Solidarity Center, indicated that garment workers earned far less than they need to cover expenses. Although the minimum wage for garment and footwear workers rose this year to $153 per month, up from $140, some union representatives says it still falls far short of a fair living wage.
The analysis recommends amendments and additions to the draft law that would bring it in line with international human rights law and constitutional human rights guarantees. The Solidarity Center, CCHR and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) compared the draft law with international standards and best practices, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and International Labor Organization conventions.
Over the past 20 years, the Solidarity Center has helped eliminate child labor in Liberian rubber plantations; assisted Iraqi trade unions in passing an unprecedented labor law that addresses sexual discrimination at work; campaigned to end workplace-based racism against Afro-Brazilians; and enabled the Burmese labor movement to flourish in a newly democratic Myanmar.
Over the past 20 years, the Solidarity Center has enabled workers like those in Bangladesh garment factories to achieve safer working conditions through thousands of occupational safety programs. With support and training for union organizers, the Solidarity Center has assisted union leaders like those in Georgia empower workers in a wide range of industries to achieve collective bargaining.
Over the past 20 years, the Solidarity Center has helped migrant workers in Moldova and other countries learn about their rights at work while seeking to prevent human trafficking. With a focus on achieving gender equality in the workplace, Solidarity Center programs have trained women workers to take leading roles at their workplaces, in their unions and in their communities.
Over the past 20 years, the Solidarity Center has consistently fought for worker rights—and over the next 20 years, we will expand our work toenable workers to assert their fundamental rights at workand build a better future for workers around the world. Here are a few highlights.
ERADICATING CHILD LABOR IN BANGLADESH
In Bangladesh, the Solidarity Center jump-started the process to eradicate child labor from the garment industry, laid the groundwork that nurtured young women leaders at major unions and associations, wrote the first labor law for export-processing zones and is a catalyst to the current resurgence in helping workers form unions.
A Bangladesh garment worker is among tens of thousands of union members who can bargain for rights at work with their unions, with Solidarity Center assistance. Credit: Solidarity Center
ACHIEVING FIRST-EVER RIGHTS FOR DOMESTIC WORKERS
As part of worldwide campaign to enshrine labor rights for domestic workers, the Solidarity Center joined other global advocates in pushing for passage of the International Labor Organization (ILO) Domestic Workers Convention 189. Passed in 2011, Convention 189 marked a major milestone, signaling recognition that the 53 million mostly women workers who labor in households, often in isolation and at risk of exploitation and abuse, deserve full protection of labor laws.
Passage of the ILO convention on domestic workers’ rights at work culminated a multiyear effort by the Solidarity Center and allied organizations. Credit: Equal Times/JP-Pouteau
SUPPORTING IRAQI TRADE UNIONS PASS AN HISTORIC LABOR LAW
The Solidarity Center was among the first organizations to support Iraq’s blossoming trade union movement and has consistently partnered with the Iraqi labor movement since 2004. It has carried out skills-building programs with dozens of unions and hundreds of their members in every province of the country, and helped Iraqi unions coalesce around and draft a labor law, passed in 2015, that provides for collective bargaining, further limits child labor, improves rights for migrant workers and is the country’s first legislation to address sexual harassment at work.
In May Day rallies and at other public events, Iraqi workers, with support from the Solidarity Center, pushed for passage of a expansive labor law. Credit: GFITU
WINNING LIVING WAGES ON LIBERIA RUBBER PLANTATIONS
Solidarity Center training and support of the Firestone Agricultural Workers Union of Liberia (FAWUL) laid the groundwork for a landmark collective bargaining agreement in 2008 that eliminated child labor at the Firestone rubber plantation by addressing exploitative wages and workers’ impossible quotas. With Solidarity Center legal support, Liberian union members advocated for the 2015 passage of the Decent Work law, and key provisions, including a minimum wage for informal workers, job safety and health, and workers compensation.
Sorbor S. Tarnue, 17, attends school at the Firestone rubber plantation because her parents’ union, FAWUL, a Solidarity Center ally, negotiated a reduction in the high daily production quota of latex. Parents had been forced to bring their children to work to meet the high quotas.
ENSURING SAFETY AND HEALTH AT WORKPLACES IN TBLISI, GEORGIA
The Georgian union movement withstood deep attacks on worker rights throughout the 2004–2013 regime of Mikheil Saakashvili. With consistent backing from the Solidarity Center, the Georgia Trade Union Confederation (GTUC) tapped into international mechanisms to protect worker rights, and unions fought back against a broad array of union-busting tactics instigated by the government. Now Solidarity Center programs are enabling Georgian workers to form unions in metal factories, coal mines, schools and hospitals and, through the three-year, “Strengthening Worker Organizations in Georgia,” program, helping transit and other workers address critical safety and health issues at work.
At the Gldani Metro Depot in Tbilisi, Georgia, the Metro Workers’ Trade Union of Georgia is addressing safety issues through collective bargaining. Credit: Solidarity Center/Lela Mepharishvili
SUSTAINING BURMESE UNIONS THROUGHOUT A LONG DICTATORSHIP
The Solidarity Center’s nearly 30-year support of exiled leaders of the Federation of Trade Unions–Burma following a brutal crackdown by Burma’s military junta, enabled the union movement to return in 2012 to Myanmar. Today, the Confederation of Trade Unions–Myanmar has now helped more than 60,000 workers form unions.
Farmers across Myanmar are the fastest growing group of workers forming unions since 2011, when a new law allowed creation of unions. Credit: Solidarity Center/Tula Connell
ENSURING COLOMBIA PORT WORKERS HAVE A VOICE ON THE JOB
In Colombia, the Solidarity Center helped workers form the national port workers’ union and provides ongoing support for the union’s worker organizing efforts in a sector that is rife with rights violations. The union now has affiliated more than 10,000 workers and negotiated three collective bargaining agreements—the sector’s only contracts in the past 25 years. These contracts have improved wages and labor conditions for some 2,000 workers, the majority of whom are of Afro-Colombian descent.
With Solidarity Center support, more than 10,000 Colombia port workers have a voice at work through a union. Credit: Solidarity Center/Rhett Doumitt
LEADING INTERNATIONAL EFFORTS TO PROTECT BAHRAINI WORKERS
In Bahrain, the Solidarity Center played a key role in international efforts, and through a bilateral trade agreement, to defend the local activism of the General Federation of Bahrain Trade Unions, which advocated to protect workers from arbitrary dismissal and discrimination in the wake of the Arab uprising.
Fired Bahraini women protest in front of Bahrain Labor Ministry. Photo: Kate Conradt
ACHIEVING RIGHTS FOR MIGRANT WORKERS
Over the past 20 years, the Solidarity Center has helped unions move beyond xenophobia to embrace migrant workers in their unions in the construction sector in the Dominican Republic; persuaded policymakers globally to eliminate onerous recruitment fees for migrant workers, which often result in debt bondage; connected unions in South Asia with unions in the Middle East to facilitate protection of South Asian migrant worker rights; and provided migrant farm workers in South Africa with increased access to justice for nonpayment of wages and discrimination in the workplace.
Construction workers in Dominican Republic, many of Haitian descent, now have a voice at work through their union. Credit: Solidarity Center/Ricardo Rojas
CHALLENGING RACISM AGAINST AFRO-BRAZILIANS AT THE WORKPLACE
The Solidarity Center, together with the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, worked in Brazil with the Inter-American Union Institute for Racial Equality (INSPIR) for the past 20 years to help eliminate racism against Afro-descendants in the workplace and throughout society.
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 fair wages, social protections and safe working conditions.
This approach has concentrated most of the wealth produced by millions of working people into the hands of only a few, and has made decent jobs increasingly precarious.
The Solidarity Center supports working people around the world as they stand together and fight for better wages and working conditions.
Ratan, a tailor in a Bangladesh factory. Credit: Solidarity Center
WORKERS ORGANIZE TO SAVE LIVES
With millions of workers denied their rights and dignity on the job, the global economy is rife with exploitation.
But when workers are able to exercise their right to freedom of association by collectively finding solutions to unjust practices and other workplace issues by forming and joining unions, they can protect themselves and each other from exploitation, support their families and secure the benefits of their own hard work.
Workers may come from different parts of the world but fight for the same rights (as seen above).
Transport workers in Georgia formed a union to ensure their working conditions were safe. In Mexico, the Mineras de Acero (Women Mineworkers of Steel) help many women miners work safely.
Burmese migrant workers stand outside fish canning factories thinking about their options. In Liberia, workers and their unions played a crucial role in combating the spread of the Ebola virus.
WORKER RIGHTS = HUMAN RIGHTS
Our world and its globalized economy are changing at lightning pace, and it is critical that the tools we use to protect labor rights adapt just as quickly.
A first step towards that goal is to obliterate the antiquated and artificial distinction between labor rights and human rights.
Labor rights are human rights.
MAINA KIAI
Denying freedom of assembly and association isolates people in the workplace. On their own, workers often do not have enough leverage to negotiate with their employers and demand fair wages and safe working conditions for themselves and for their fellow workers.
Unions are helping to change that.
Members of several unions march for labor reforms in Nigeria on World Day for Decent Work. Credit: IndustriALL
WORKERS STAND TOGETHER
Despite many obstacles, millions of working people around the world are fighting to exercise their basic right to organize by creating and joining unions. In doing so, they gain access to many more rights on the job.
Maung Maung, president of the Confederation of Trade Unions of Myanmar (CTUM), speaks to over a hundred workers. Credit: Jeanne Hallacy
PROTECTING THE RIGHTS OF ALL
Many workers—including migrant, informal, domestic, and contract workers—find themselves in precarious situations because their work is not protected under national labor laws.
Unions strive to include these groups of workers in their negotiations with governments and employers to broaden and strengthen labor protections for everyone.
INFORMAL WORKERS
Contract workers in agriculture and workers in the informal economy, such as market vendors, have strengthened their collective voice through union activism.
Mr. Cristo Humberto, an african palm fruit collector posses for the camera with his mule inside the plantation of Palmas del Cesar oil CO. Minas, Colombia, April 25, 2016.
Joel De Los Santos sells his plantains in the Municipal Market of San Cristobal, July 28, 2014. SOLIDARITY CENTER /Ricardo Rojas.(DOMINICAN REPUBLIC – Tags: BUSINESS EMPLOYMENT SOCIETY MARKET )
MIGRANT WORKERS
Migrant workers are often denied their freedoms of peaceful assembly and of association because of their irregular status in their new communities.
Many migrant workers also fear that if they stand up for their rights by themselves, they may be fired and lose their ability to stay in the country.
With freedom of association, migrant workers can stand up for better wages and working conditions without fear.
A construction worker in the Dominican Republic, where many workers are originally from Haiti. Credit: Solidarity Center/Ricardo Rojas
Many garment workers in Myanmar migrated from other parts of the country and from abroad. Credit: Solidarity Center/Tula Connell
DOMESTIC WORKERS
Domestic workers are often not recognized under national labor laws, which makes it difficult for them to exercise their assembly and association rights at work.
Domestic workers in many countries have made unprecedented strides in recent years in having their work legally recognized and securing their right to join unions.
Salome Molefe is a domestic worker and union organizer in a suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa. Credit: Solidarity Center/Jemal Countess
Unions in Kenya are helping domestic workers negotiate and enforce contracts with their employers. Credit: Solidarity Center/Kate Holt
WORKING WOMEN
Restricting the rights of workers also fuels gender inequality. Women in the global economy are often relegated to low-paying, low-skill jobs. Many women also experience gender-based violence in the workplace that prevents them from speaking up.
Working women are finding strength in unions where they can advocate for better wages and working conditions together.
Dzidai Magada Mwarozva, Director of Human Resources at Phillips, now Destiny Electronics, a principle distributor of Phillips Electronics and Telecommunications products in Zimbabwe at the Phillips Facility in Harare on July 16, 2015.
A garment worker in Cambodia. Credit: Solidarity Center/Claudio Montesano Casillas
TAKING ACTION
By standing up for their dignity and rights together, and in challenging the systems that undermine those rights, working people find collective solutions to local problems–as well as create pathways for change for other workers, across industries, borders and cultures.
Unions in Cambodia rally for a living wage and the expansion of freedom of association. Credit: Solidarity Center/Tharo Khun
Domestic workers at the 2016 Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) Forum in Brazil. Credit: Solidarity Center/Tula Connell
CREATING CHANGE
When workers’ freedom of assembly and association rights are protected, the relationship with their employer is more fair.
Unions and worker associations provide a collective voice on the job, helping to correct abuses, improve workplace safety and raise wages.
CTUM President Maung Maung accepts a certificate of registration for the union federation. Credit: CTUM
ACHIEVING DECENT WORK
The freedom to assemble and associate is the foundation for worker rights–and for all other rights, as they enable people to voice their interests, protect their dignity and hold governments accountable.
Coca-Cola factory workers in the Hlaing Thay Yar industrial zone outside of Yangon have formed a union with the Confederation of Trade Unions of Myanmar.
Garment workers in Cambodia. Credit: Solidarity Center/Claudio Montesano Casillas
PROMOTING FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION
The Solidarity Center partners with workers and their unions around the world as they challenge restrictions on freedom of association and strive for greater equity in the global economy.
Workers in Bangladesh fight for the freedom of association on May Day 2016. Credit: Solidarity Center
In Peru, tens of thousands of mineworkers call for an end to laws that facilitate mass layoffs. Credit: Solidarity Center/Samantha Tate
BUILDING A BETTER TOMORROW
When working people can exercise their basic rights, together they can challenge a global system of poverty and exploitation and achieve a brighter future for themselves and for their children.
Demetrio, a palm worker on the Palmas del Espino plantation in Peru, with his daughter Emelia. Credit: Solidarity Center/Oscar Durand
ENGAGING IN INTERNATIONAL LAW TO PROMOTE CHANGE
National laws and company policies have contributed to inequality by systematically undermining the basic rights of the majority of the world’s workers. Most importantly, governments and corporations are denying workers their right to freedom of assembly and association, which prevents them from joining together to advocate for their rights, according to Maina Kiai, UN Special Rapporteur for the rights to freedom of assembly and of association.
“So many workers toil long hours for low wages in unsafe and unhealthy environments, risking disease, injury and death. They work without basic social protections such as health care, education, pensions or, in the case of trafficked workers, the right to choose or leave employment.”
– MAINA KIAI, UN SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR ON THE RIGHTS TO FREEDOM OF PEACEFUL ASSEMBLY AND OF ASSOCIATION
ENGAGING IN INTERNATIONAL LAW TO PROMOTE CHANGE
National laws and company policies have contributed to inequality by systematically undermining the basic rights of the majority of the world’s workers. Most importantly, governments and corporations are denying workers their right tofreedom of assembly and association, which prevents them from joining together to advocate for their rights, according to Maina Kiai, UN Special Rapporteur for the rights to freedom of assembly and of association.
“So many workers toil long hours for low wages in unsafe and unhealthy environments, risking disease, injury and death. They work without basic social protections such as health care, education, pensions or, in the case of trafficked workers, the right to choose or leave employment.”
– MAINA KIAI, UN SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR ON THE RIGHTS TO FREEDOM OF PEACEFUL ASSEMBLY AND OF ASSOCIATION
Maina Kiai presented his report to the United Nations in October 2016 in his capacity as Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Freedom of Association (May 2011 – April 2017). Credit: UN
To learn more about working people around the world and how the Solidarity Center supports their right to organize, visit www.solidaritycenter.org.
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 side event in Geneva.
Shawna Bader-Blau urged the human rights and labor communities to join forces and fight the challenges of globalization.
“The challenge right now is for all of us in the broader the human rights community to stand together—NGOs, human right defenders, trade unions, everyone—to oppose the global closing of civic space and fight to create more decent work opportunities, better livelihoods and more human dignity and freedom,” says Solidarity Center Executive Director Shawna Bader-Blau. She spoke on the panel, “Freedom of Association as a Fundamental Workplace Right,” held in conjunction with UN Human Rights Council meetings. (See Bader-Blau’s full speech in the video, beginning at 48:07.)
The event builds on the landmark 2016 report presented by UN Special Rapporteur Maina Kiai to the UN in October that forcefully conveys how the vast majority of the world’s workers are disenfranchised from their rights to assembly and association—rights that are fundamental to all other human rights—either by exclusion or outright oppression.
“The report reminds us that freedom of peaceful assembly and association are foundational rights precisely because they are essential to human dignity, economic power, sustainable development and democracy,” says Deborah Greenfield, ILO deputy director general for policy.
“They are the gateway to all other rights. Without them, all other civil and human rights are in jeopardy.”
Globalization Blunts Worker Efforts to Improve Workplaces
Globalization has not benefited most of the world’s workers, says panelist Raquel Gonzalez, director of ITUC’s Geneva office.
The “dramatic increase in the power of multinationals,” with suppliers and contractors dictating the terms and conditions of employment for millions of workers, especially in developing countries, has resulted in low wages and temporary and outsourced work, which in turn limits the ability of workers to form unions and improve their working conditions, she says.
Further, says Gonzales, the growth of foreign direct investment means nations compete to attract much-needed funds—and in doing so, “states undermine worker rights.” A key example, she says, is export-processing zones, where workers are paid low wages and labor in unsafe conditions, yet typically are prohibited from forming unions, points Bader-Blau also underscored in her description of the ongoing campaign to silence garment workers that began in Ashulia, Bangladesh, last December.
States should provide grievance mechanism for abuses, says Gonzalez, but labor inspector offices are weak.
“The evidence is unequivocal that in many places and many instances it is the case that workers are denied their fundamental rights by the deliberate and intentional action by employers and the state,” says UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Kate Gilmore, who also spoke at the two-hour event.
Women, Informal Economy Workers Especially Vulnerable
Gonzalez touched on how workers in agriculture, the informal economy, domestic work and women workers in general are especially vulnerable to abuse because they often are excluded from national labor laws.
“That’s why global labor supports an ILO convention on decent work in global supply chains to cover areas not now covered by ILO instruments,” says Gonzalez.
Women also are exposed to gender-based violence at work, a violation of fundamental human rights, and the Solidarity Center, in conjunction with the global labor movement, is working for passage of an ILO convention on the prevention of gender-based violence at work.
The extension of human rights to workers is critical,” says Bader-Blau, and the power of bridging labor and human rights is especially necessary “given the global closing space for civil society and what we see as its connection to entrenched economic inequality, as workers lose or are repressed in their exercise of freedom of association.
“The key is really to advance freedom of association and assembly for workers,” she says.
Also speaking on the panel: Roberto Suarez-Santos, deputy secretary-general of the International Organization of Employers, and Jerald Joseph, commissioner of the Malaysia Human Rights Commission.
The event was co-sponsored by the Solidarity Center, UN Special Rapporteur United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association; the AFL-CIO, International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), International Labor Organization (ILO) and CIVICUS.
A new Solidarity Center video makes it easy to understand how global supply chains, government inaction, poverty and economic inequality are connected—while highlighting how unions are key to reversing the dynamic that fuels low wages and unsafe workplaces.
In the short, “white board” video, the narrator explains that by using collective power, workers “improve their workplaces, their wages, their families’ living conditions—and they use that power to improve their communities and build democracy.
“In strong democracies, working people hold their governments accountable so more people have better jobs and the dignity everyone deserves.”
The bottom line: “Together we can create better jobs, stronger communities!”
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