Alice Mwadzi: Door to Door Giving Hope to Domestic Workers

Alice Mwadzi: Door to Door Giving Hope to Domestic Workers

Over the past five years, Alice Mwadzi signed up 200 domestic workers with KUDHEIHA union in Kenya and helps women seeking to migrate abroad, where conditions can be brutal, get jobs in their own country.

“I go door to door to give them hope,” she says with pride.

Sok, 19, Paid Poverty Wages as Domestic Worker in Cambodia

Sok, 19, Paid Poverty Wages as Domestic Worker in Cambodia

Sok Rathana, 19, has been a domestic worker in Cambodia for two years, working 100 hours a month for $70 while attending high school. Her family is poor, and her mother also is a domestic worker.

As in many countries, domestic workers in Cambodia are not covered by labor laws and so have no minimum wage, safety and health protections or other basic employment benefits.

As Sok says, “I don’t think I have full rights as a domestic worker.”

Kyrgyzstan’s Sherimbayeva: ‘We Are Stronger… Together’

Kyrgyzstan’s Sherimbayeva: ‘We Are Stronger… Together’

Kymbat Sherimbayeva was born in Naryn Oblast, a mountainous and very cold region of Kyrgyzstan where most people support themselves through cattle breeding.  Seven years ago, 18-year-old Sherimbayeva left her village for Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan’s capital, seeking work.

Youth un- and underemployment stands at 55 percent in Kyrgyzstan. Most young people feel forced to migrate to Kazakhstan, Korea, Russia, Turkey or other countries in search of work, but some young people like Sherimbayeva hope to build their futures closer to home.

After arriving in Bishkek, Sherimbayeva found a job as a knitter at a hosiery factory, where she was soon promoted to head of quality control.

While working at the factory, Sherimbayeva says, she and her some 200 coworkers—of whom 90 percent are between the ages of 18 and 25—became increasingly concerned about inadequate wages and poor safety and health conditions.

With the help of trainings provided by the Garment Workers’ Union of Kyrgyzstan, with Solidarity Center support, workers at the factory realized they could negotiate improvements with management much more effectively as a group than as individuals. “We are stronger when we are together,” says Sherimbayeva.

Workers identified several activist leaders, including Sherimbayeva, who helped organize their coworkers into a union local. This year, workers are negotiating their first agreement with their employer, focusing on better wages and benefits. Sherimbayeva says that workers’ need higher wages because the average monthly salary of $200 does not cover basic expenses. She also hopes to help achieve for her co-workers paid sick leave and a year-end bonus, which are common to workers in Kyrgyzstan but not available to workers at their factory.

Since she and her co-workers organized, Sherimbayeva says they have found it much easier to negotiate improvements with factory management, even before a formal agreement is in effect. For example, in consultation with the union, factory management developed safety instructions for all departments and trained workers on those procedures; hired a local occupational safety and health service; provided protective clothing and other personal safety equipment; and now displays occupational safety and health information in prominent places throughout the factory building.

“Our position is much stronger concerning our labor as well as human rights. Together, we are able to defend workers in a much more effective way,” she says.

 

 

Take Action in Support of Jailed Kazakh Union Leaders!

Take Action in Support of Jailed Kazakh Union Leaders!

Two Kazak union leaders who were arrested and imprisoned in January after leading a hunger strike, have been convicted and fined exorbitant amounts for their protest against the government’s liquidation of the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions of Kazakhstan (KNPRK) in favor of a government-aligned federation.

Amin Yeleusinov, chairman of the Oil Construction Company union, was sentenced to two years in prison on politically motivated embezzlement charges and fined $26,300, according to Human Rights Watch. Yeleusinov, 55, is banned from engaging in any trade union activities for five years.

Authorities attempted to make Yeleusinov sign a false confession, and he has fallen ill due to the conditions in his prison cell and the harsh detention regime, according to the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).

Nurbek Kushakbayev, KNPRK deputy president, was sentenced to two years prison in a corrective labor colony and fined $80,000. The OCC demanded the fines to pay for “harm” caused to the company. Human rights organizations say the trials were not conducted with due process and evidence acquitting the men was repressed.

(Send an email to management demanding the fines be dropped.)

Kazakhstan’s Attacks on Unions Gains Momentum

Yeleusinov’s conviction is the latest development in an ongoing crackdown on independent labor movement in Kazakhstan, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW), and part of an overall spate of “attacks, harassment and prosecutions as Kazakhstan’s embattled civil society continues to be targeted for exercising fundamental rights.”

The country adopted an onerous trade union law in 2014 that marginalized independent unions in favor of a government-controlled federation. Beginning in 2015, the Kazak government began denying registration of unions in the oil, health, construction, media and education sectors along with regional union bodies, as well as the national independent trade confederation. (See the HRW report on violations of workers’ rights in Kazakhstan.)

Larisa Kharkova, KNPRK chairperson, has been subjected to administrative and judicial harassment since the beginning of this year, and she is now facing what human rights organizations say is a series of trumped-up criminal charges.

‘Foreign Investors Should Recognize Kazakhstan’s Attacks on Workers’

The ITUC has lodged a formal complaint with the International Labor Organization over the union leaders’ imprisonment and over the government’s refusal to recognize the rights of workers to form independent trade unions.

Last month, Kazakhstan hosted an international exposition featuring the theme, “future energy,” a high-profile event expected to draw 3 million visitors, including global wealth leaders. Events like EXPO 2017 “should not distract from the serious human rights problems in Kazakhstan, or from the human costs of the government’s repressive policies,” according to Mihra Rittmann, an HRW researcher in Central Asia.

“Foreign investors–many of whom recognize the importance of upholding international labor standards–should take note that while the government claimed it was creating a better system of social partnerships and modernizing trade unions, the reality is that they decimated Kazakhstan’s independent trade union movement,” says Rittmann.

Union Leader Murdered in Colombia

Union Leader Murdered in Colombia

The president of a local branch of Colombia’s National Union of Agricultural Workers (SINTRAINAGRO) was fatally shot by gunmen on a motorcycle on July 1 while watching his son play soccer.

Alberto Román Acosta González led the Guacarí SINTRAINAGRO branch in Colombia’s Valle del Cauca. The Guacarí branch, along with other SINTRAINAGRO branches that represent sugar workers in the region, have been engaged in a 10-year, coordinated effort to formalize workers’ jobs and secure basic labor rights. According to Rhett Doumitt, Solidarity Center country program director, sugar workers and their unions have faced extreme violence in response to organizing efforts and their demands to end informal employment, which deprives workers of social protection and rights.

SINTRAINAGRO is an affiliate of the global food, farm and hotel union, IUF, which has written Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos to “demand a full and transparent investigation into this latest assassination and adequate measures to protect union leaders and members.” In 2013, Juan Carlos Pérez Muñoz, a union member in Colombia, was gunned down on his way to board a bus to the Cauca River Valley, where he worked in the sugarcane fields.

Last month, Colombia was listed as among the 10 worst countries for worker rights in the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) Global Rights Index. On June 21, a group of armed and masked men forcibly abducted and murdered Mauricio Fernando López Vélez, national vice president of the Union of Workers of Public Universities (SINTRAUNAL) and professor at Valle University, from his family’s farm in Buenos Aires, Cauca.

Up until the past few years, Colombia was the deadliest country for union leaders and members, with several thousand murdered over decades. The majority of those cases remain unsolved.

“Colombia remains one of the worst violators of trade union rights with a horrendous record for impunity regarding the murders of trade unionists,” according to the report. “Threats, violence and intimidation against trade unionists have a deep-rooted culture in Colombia and have continued apace in 2017.”

Sugarcane cutters work for up to 14 hours a day and make as little as $194 a month.

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