Solidarity Center - Tag: freedom to form unions

A World in Which Workers Have Decent Jobs, Fair Wages

Jan 24, 2017

Decent work, living wages, safe workplaces–these are some of the goals the Solidarity Center envisions for all workers around the world and for which it strives as the largest U.S.-based international worker rights organization, says Solidarity Center Executive Director Shawna Bader-Blau in a recent interview.

Speaking on “Human Rights Heroes,” a podcast sponsored by the U.S. State Department’s Office of International Labor Affairs, Bader-Blau pointed to broad-based human rights workers can achieve when they join together in unions or associations.

“Just in the past 50 years, we can see that every major transition to democracy has had trade unions front and center.”

In Morocco, the Solidarity Center supported more than 1,000 agricultural workers, many with limited literacy and the majority women, who came together to form their first union in export agriculture.

“They sat down with employers they had always been intimidated by and negotiated fair wages, decent work and dignity for the first time,” says Bader-Blau. The workers now have full-time employment, fair wages and safer jobs.

Speaking with podcast host Sarah Fox, outgoing special representative for international labor affairs, Bader-Blau also discussed the landmark freedom of association report produced in October by United Nations Special Rapporteur Maina Kiai; the scourge of human trafficking for labor and forced labor; and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, especially Goal 8 on inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment and decent work for all.

Despite economic growth and reduction of poverty in recent years, says Bader-Blau, “we’ve seen an expansion of inequality within states and between states.”

But with Goal 8, “we will be able to create through good employment the ability to have fair economies and more just societies, when workers every day can go to work and know they will get paid what they are owed and won’t face indignities at work and that they will make family supporting wages.”

Listen to the full podcast here.

Make Every Job a Good Job

Jan 16, 2017

Around the world, workers, their unions and other associations are striving to promote the rights of working people at their jobs and in their everyday lives.

While every job has value, not all jobs are “good jobs.” Millions of jobs around the world do not offer the social protections or the sense of dignity that allow workers to enjoy the benefits of their own hard work.

The Solidarity Center works with unions and other allies to empower workers around the world to achieve decent work together.

WHAT MAKES A “GOOD JOB”?

In Thailand, Burmese migrant workers and their families learn about their rights on the job through training programs organized by the Human Rights Development Foundation (HRDF), a Solidarity Center ally.

But what are those rights? What makes a job a “good job”?

At the Pae Pla Pier in Mahachai, Thailand, Burmese dockworkers cart barrels of fish. Credit: Solidarity Center/Jeanne Hallacy

GOOD JOBS ARE SAFE

At the Gldani Metro Depot in Tbilisi, Georgia, employees work with dangerous chemicals and face constant danger from high voltage electrical wires. Their union, the Metro Workers’ Trade Union of Georgia (MWTUG), is addressing these safety and health risks with assistance from the Solidarity Center.

Tamaz Simonishvili, a repairman at the Gldani Metro Train Depot. Credit: Solidarity Center/Lela Mepharishvili

The Solidarity Center also partners with numerous unions and worker associations in Bangladesh to train garment workers in fire safety and other measures to improve their working conditions.

Participants in a fire safety training program at the East West Group in Gazipur, Bangladesh. Credit: Solidarity Center

GOOD JOBS PAY LIVING WAGES

At the Palmas del César palm oil extraction plant in Minas, Colombia, workers are represented by Solidarity Center union ally Sintrapalmas-Monterrey. The union organized subcontracted workers into its bargaining unit, significantly improving their wages, benefits and job conditions.

A worker loading nets into a cart at the Palmas del César palm oil extraction plant. Credit: Solidarity Center/Carlos Villalon

In Sri Lanka, where jobs are shifting from the industrial to service sector, workers like members of Food, Beverage and Tobacco Industry Employees’ Union (FBTIEU) are forming unions in the hotel and tourism sectors to ensure that the new jobs pay living wages and offer social benefits.

Hotel workers in Sri Lanka organizing. Credit: Solidarity Center/Pushpa Kumara

GOOD JOBS TAKE CARE OF WORKERS

The National Union of Mine, Metal, Steel and Allied Workers of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMSSRM, known as “Los Mineros”) has won many bargaining pacts that include significant economic benefits and essential safety and health protections for workers.

Ruth Rivera, a miner in Mexico’s Baja California Sur, is also a shop steward for her union. Credit: Solidarity Center/Roberto Armocida

Agricultural workers in Rustenburg, South Africa, are members of the Food and Allied Workers Union (FAWU), a Solidarity Center partner, which represents migrant farm workers in Mpumalanga Province and assists them in gaining access to health care and other services.

A FAWU member plants cabbage seedlings on a farm in Rustenburg, South Africa. Credit: Solidarity Center/Jemal Countess

GOOD JOBS GIVE WORKERS A BREAK

Across the Arab Gulf, more than 2.4 million migrant domestic workers often toil 12–20 hour days, six or seven days a week. Domestic workers in Jordan recently formed a worker rights network that advocates for better working conditions and includes migrant workers from Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka.

Sri Lankan domestic workers in Jordan defend their rights. Credit: Solidarity Center/Francesca Ricciardone

The Kenya Union of Domestic, Hotel, Educational Institutions, Hospitals and Allied Workers (KUDHEIHA), a Solidarity Center partner, has been at the forefront of championing the rights of domestic workers at the national level and working locally to organize workers into the union and educate them about their rights.

Lucy Nyangasi, 26, a domestic worker in Nairobi. Credit: Solidarity Center/Kate Holt

GOOD JOBS EMPOWER WOMEN

Dozens of journalists and media professionals have taken part in the Solidarity Center’s ongoing Gender Equity and Physical Safety training in Pakistan, identifying priority gender equality issues at their workplaces and in their unions, and outlining strategies for addressing those issues.

Journalists in Pakistan participate in Solidarity Center-sponsored gender equality workshops. Credit: Solidarity Center/Immad Ashraf

Through her union, the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions Workers Union (PGFTU) and the Solidarity Center, kindergarten teacher Khadeja Othman says she has gained new skills in workshops, training courses and hands-on experience.

Khadeja Othman, a Palestinian kindergarten teacher in Ramallah’s Bet Our Al Tahta village. Credit: Solidarity Center/Alaa T. Badarneh

ORGANIZED WORKERS CREATE GOOD JOBS

Workers and their families on the Firestone rubber plantation used their union, the Firestone Agricultural Workers Union of Liberia (FAWUL), to negotiate work quotas that could be met without the need for children to assist their parents. Children also now receive free education as a result of union negotiations.

Opa Johnson, a rubber tapper on the Firestone rubber plantation. Credit: Solidarity Center/B.E. Diggs

Even self-employed workers have organized to defend their right to decent work. The Zimbabwe Chamber of Informal Economy Associations (ZCIEA), a Solidarity Center partner, trains negotiators in collective bargaining with municipalities to provide adequate space for vendors and other informal workers throughout their cities.

Nyaradzo Tavariwisa makes and sells peanut butter to support her family. Credit: Solidarity Center/Jemal Countess

UNIONS HELP MAKE JOBS BETTER

Working people time and again have proven that when they are free to form and join unions and bargain for better working conditions, they can achieve decent work, improve their lives and benefit their families and communities.

In Peru, two unions, both Solidarity Center allies, represent palm workers on plantations and in processing factories. These unions have helped improve dangerous working conditions, access to healthcare and job stability through collective bargaining and labor inspections.

Peruvian palm oil workers travel across the plantation where they live and work. Credit: Solidarity Center/Oscar Durand

THE SOLIDARITY CENTER HELPS WORKING PEOPLE ATTAIN DECENT WORK

Decent work means employment that provides living wages in workplaces that are safe and healthy. Decent work is about fairness on the job and social protections for workers when they are sick, when they get injured or when they retire.

Maina Kiai Receives AFL-CIO Human Rights Award

Dec 15, 2016

Describing United Nations Special Rapporteur Maina Kiai as “an effective watchdog against crackdowns of freedom of association and assembly,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka presented Kiai with the 2016 AFL-CIO George Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award.

Maina Kiai, Richard Trumka, UN Special Rapporteur, AFL-CIO Human Rights Award, Solidarity Center

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka (left) presented the AFL-CIO Human Rights Award to UN Special Rapporteur Maina Kiai. Credit: Solidarity Center/Tula Connell

“Maina inspires the advocates and workers who struggle to defend, to maintain and to grow the institutions of civil societies around the world,” said Trumka, speaking at the award ceremony last night in Washington, D.C. I’m talking about those who organize for women’s rights and workers’ rights, for indigenous people, for immigrants, for religious freedom and for economic justice.” (Watch the video of the full event.)

As UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, Kiai in October presented the landmark “Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Association” report to the UN General Assembly. The report 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.

‘Labor Rights Are Human Rights’

In his acceptance speech, Kiai outlined the challenges faced by champions of economic and social justice around the world, but called on labor and human rights activists to take successful lessons from the past to counter opposition to achieving fundamental human rights.

“Labor rights are human rights and human rights are labor rights,” Kiai said. “Today, we need to work differently. We need to reach out to each other. We know that every major struggle in the world has been successful through a grand alliance of trade unions and human and civil rights activists.”

Kiai previously served as head of the Kenya Human Rights Commission, and the Central Organization of Trade Unions–Kenya applauded Kiai, saying “the award singles out Maina for advancing worker and human rights issues and specifically highlighting the widespread denial of fundamental human rights at work.”

Kiai: Witness to Workers’ Struggles Worldwide

Since becoming special rapporteur in 2011, Kiai has traveled around the world, speaking with marginalized people in developed and developing countries, including workers, and hearing their struggles to exercise their fundamental rights firsthand, while speaking out about the abuses and injustices he has witnessed.

“I want to thank you for having the courage to speak up for truth,” said Trumka. “Your courage inspires all of us. Your integrity is a beacon to all of us.”

The annual Meany-Kirkland award, created in 1980 and named for the first two presidents of the AFL-CIO, recognizes outstanding examples of the international struggle for human rights through trade unions. Speakers at the event included Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and two worker Kiai met while traveling through the United States on a fact-finding mission this year, Lee Ruffin and Daniel Castellaños, founder of the National Guestworker Alliance.

The award went to the Trade Union Congress of Swaziland (TUCOSWA) in 2015; Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWI) and its affiliates in 2014; the International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWF) in 2013 and the Tunisian General Union of Labor (UGTT) and the General Federation of Bahrain Trade Unions (GBFTU) in 2012.

Informal Workers’ Organizing (WIEGO, 2013)

Nov 24, 2013

In overviewing self-organizing among such informal economy workers as waste pickers, domestic workers and construction workers, this report finds the lines are increasingly blurred between jobs in the formal and informal economies. This Solidarity Center report is part of a multiyear research project, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, to study the informal economy, migration, gender and rule of law together with research partners Rutgers and WIEGO.

Download here.

Trade Unions Organizing Workers “Informalized from Above”: Case Studies from Cambodia, Colombia, South Africa and Tunisia (Rutgers, 2013)

Oct 24, 2013

Four case studies examine successful union organizing among workers whose jobs have been privatized, outsourced or contracted out. This Solidarity Center report is part of a multiyear research project, funded by the U.S. Agency forInternational Development, to study the informal economy, migration, gender and rule of law together with research partners Rutgers and WIEGO.