Swazi Trade Union Federation Sounds Alarm over Job Losses

Swazi Trade Union Federation Sounds Alarm over Job Losses

Representatives of Swaziland’s trade union federation, TUCOSWA—who are in Washington, D.C., to receive a human rights award from the AFL-CIO in recognition of the courage and persistence of Swaziland’s workers in demanding their rights—say an alarming number of people are losing their jobs because of the country’s unwillingness to improve its poor human rights record.

Swaziland lost preferential access to the U.S. market under the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), on January 1, for violations of worker rights eligibility criteria, including laws that restrict freedom of association and speech. As a result, thousands of workers, especially in the textile sector, face layoffs, said Secretary General of the Trade Union Congress of Swaziland (TUCOSWA) Vincent Ncongwane, at a briefing on working conditions in Swaziland at the Solidarity Center yesterday. Some employers are closing factories while others are moving production to subsidiary plants outside the country.

TUCOSWA has strongly criticized the Swazi government’s actions leading to AGOA suspension and has said trade benefits can be restored when the government chooses to meet benchmarks to become compliant under the Act’s eligibility requirements. In return, the federation’s activities have been disrupted, it was long denied (and only recently received) official registration, and many workers are afraid to get involved for fear of retribution, said Ncongwane.

However, international solidarity with Swazi workers and TUCOSWA has helped the labor movement remain a vibrant voice for workers, he said. The federation represents more than 36,000 workers, who do not have to see their jobs disappear.

“All that is necessary is the political will,” said Ncongwane.

This evening, Ncongwane and Patrick Mamba, TUCOSWA treasurer general, will accept the 2015 George Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award on behalf of Swazi workers at a 6 p.m. ceremony at the AFL-CIO.

2 More Honduran Union Leaders Threatened, Harassed

2 More Honduran Union Leaders Threatened, Harassed

Another union leader in Honduras has received death threats and a second union leader was arrested in the department of Colon during a peaceful rally protesting government corruption, according to the Honduras-based nonprofit ACI-Participa. Earlier this year, one Honduran union leader was murdered and another disappeared and is presumed dead. The latest incidents bring to nine the number of attacks on union leaders in 2015.

Isela Juarez Jimenez, president of the public employees union SITRASEMCA, began receiving death threats earlier this month and last week, her motorbike was rammed by a white Toyota, which had been following her for days. Jimenez was not injured.

SITRASEMCA has been in the forefront of opposition to government corruption and a water privatization scheme. More than half of all households in Tegucigalpa, the capital, do not have access to potable water and a plan supported by a government commission to privatize the water supply likely would make access to clean water prohibitively expensive for many residents.

Meanwhile, Heber Rolando Flores, a leader in the union representing workers of the National Agrarian Institute, was arrested and charged with sedition for taking part earlier this month in a peaceful rally in which students, workers and the public were protesting government corruption. Flores must report weekly to the Public Ministry until his court hearing.

Both Juarez Jimenez and Rolando Flores suffered physical attacks at the hands of security forces (including the National Police and the Army) as the September 1 anti-corruption rally was violently repressed by the state.

Violence against union leaders in Honduras nearly always goes unpunished, even though Honduras is under scrutiny for failure to enforce worker rights under its labor laws. The United States is waiting for the Honduran government to present a corrective plan of action to address labor rights violations, a move required after the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Trade and Labor Affairs last year accepted a complaint under the labor chapter of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).

The AFL-CIO and 26 Honduran unions and civil society organizations filed the complaint in March 2012. In a February 2015 report, the U.S. Trade and Labor Affairs office said Honduras has made virtually no progress since then.

A delegation of U.S. union leaders traveled on a fact-finding trip to Honduras late last year, where they described the widespread noncompliance with laws, including attacks against labor leaders, a lack of compliance with minimum wage laws and an unresponsive government. Based on the delegations’ findings, the AFL-CIO issued a report describing the exploitative conditions workers experienced in factories and in their communities. According to the report:

“Throughout the delegation visit, workers and community leaders spoke not only about the extreme levels of corruption, but also the increased militarization of the country, and widespread corruption among security forces and the impact it had on their daily lives.”

Many union leaders reporting threats and harassment are members of the Network Against Anti-Union Violence in Honduras, coordinated by leadership of the national labor confederations and the human rights NGO ACI-Participa, which seeks to promote respect for human rights in Honduras, encourage people to exercise their right to participate in decision-making processes and push for transparency in government and private-sector institutions charged with providing public services.

Good Jobs, Decent Work—Key to UN’s New 15-Year Goals

Good Jobs, Decent Work—Key to UN’s New 15-Year Goals

A vigil tonight at the United Nations kicks off events around the world body’s broad new 17-point agenda that aims in part to end extreme poverty, eradicate hunger and ensure clean water and sanitation. The 193 UN member states have debated the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) over past three years and in coming days likely will commit to work toward achieving them by 2030.

The 17 goals include 169 targets, an ambitious agenda whose success will depend upon governments and civil society working together, according to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon. But fundamental to the entire plan is Goal No. 8, “Decent Work and Economic Growth,” says Shawna Bader-Blau, Solidarity Center executive director.

“Pernicious economic and social inequality is most obvious where the rights of working people are most denied,” Bader-Blau wrote in a recent Huffington Post article. “And no effort to mitigate inequality within and among countries will succeed without a committed movement to protect and bolster those rights.”

Key Goals in Decent Work and Economic Growth
Decent Work and Economic Growth includes the following key goals:

  • By 2030, achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value.
  • By 2020, substantially reduce the proportion of youth not in employment, education or training.
  • Take immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labor, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labor, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labor in all its forms.

Another critical target is protecting worker rights and promoting safe and secure working environments for all workers, “including migrant workers, in particular women migrants, and those in precarious employment.”

“People should not have to leave their human rights at the border when they migrate,” Bader-Blau said this week on the Kojo Nnamdi radio show in Washington, D.C.

Gender Equality Essential for Broad-Based Prosperity
Achieving gender equality, Goal No. 5, also is essential to attaining broad-based prosperity. A new study released today estimates that tackling gender inequality and boosting women’s job opportunities could add $12 trillion to the annual gross domestic product (GNP).

The “Gender Equality” goal  includes as one of its top targets the elimination of all forms of violence against women and girls in the public and private sphere—a scourge that is prevalent even in the workplace, where 30 percent to 40 percent of workers report gender-based violence, a figure that rises to 90 percent in some jobs.

Building accountable institutions and ensuring access to justice (Goal No. 16 and Goal No. 17), and implementing social protections systems, one of the targets of Goal No. 1, also are essential components of the new 15-year plan.

The SDGs replace the eight UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which included halving extreme poverty, halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education by 2015.

Migrant Domestic Workers Network a First in Jordan

Migrant Domestic Workers Network a First in Jordan

Domestic workers in Jordan are set to celebrate the official formation of a worker rights network that includes migrant workers from Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka.

The September 19 launch is a first in Jordan and a rare move in the Arab region, where more than 2.4 million migrant domestic workers often toil 12–20 hour days, six or seven days a week cleaning homes, preparing meals and caring for children and the elderly. Migrant workers in Jordan, like in many countries in the Middle East and elsewhere, cannot form unions to improve their working conditions.

“Domestic workers have so many problems” and had no one to assist them until now, says Indrani, who came to Jordan as a domestic worker from Sri Lanka 20 years ago and is now helping build the network by reaching out to domestic workers in the Sri Lankan community.

Fish Ip, Asia regional coordinator for the International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWF), is traveling to Jordan for the event. IDWF members and allies, like the Solidarity Center, helped push for the 2011 passage of the International Labor Organization convention on decent work for domestic workers. Officials from the origin country embassies for the migrant domestic workers will also attend.

Through Trainings, Domestic Workers Take Leading Role
The project began early in 2014, when the Solidarity Center approached leaders in migrant worker communities to discuss plans to combat trafficking of vulnerable domestic workers and assist those experiencing worker rights abuses. Forty-two domestic worker leaders from the largest communities in Jordan—Filipino, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan and Indonesian—then took part in trainings covering worker rights, anti-human trafficking, assisting domestic workers in finding legal assistance and building worker networks.

This core group began monthly meetings in August to discuss issues, learn from studies and hear from guest speakers on migrant domestic worker issues. They are also connected with IDWF affiliates in their home countries. Network leaders bring new domestic workers to the meetings—“I bring 15 domestic workers with me,” says Indrani. So far, 268 domestic workers have participated in the training workshops and network meetings.

“We know each other, we know how to help each other,” Indrani says. Now that word has gotten around, domestic workers “know how we are helping, now they are asking to come. This time they are the ones reaching for us.”

A key draw for domestic workers is the legal clinic the Solidarity Center launched in October 2014 in partnership with the Adalah Center for Human Rights Studies. The clinic takes place after each meeting, and more than 85 domestic workers have so far sought assistance.

Domestic Workers Seek out Network
“Everyone is coming to me and asking how to get involved,” says May Joy Guarizo Salapare, a domestic worker who has been in Jordan for six years and is helping support her husband and family in the Philippines. She created a Facebook page for domestic workers in Jordan, where she shares news of the network’s meetings and legal clinics.

Guarizo says she frequently encounters domestic workers who “are asking me for help with their employer.” Domestic workers in Jordan, as in other countries, often report that employers have taken their passports, rendering them virtual prisoners, and do not receive their salary for years, she says.

Earlier this year, Guarizo participated in a U.S. Department of State Professional Fellows exchange program and traveled to the United States to examine international models for overcoming the obstacles of reaching and organizing domestic and migrant workers.

Until now, domestic workers in Jordan rarely met others not from their home countries. The new network has “united domestic workers under one umbrella, says Sara Khatib, Solidarity Center anti-trafficking in persons program officer in Jordan. The network is designed to provide a collective voice for migrant domestic workers in Jordan to ensure that they have access to full workers rights.

“Domestic workers here in Jordan are helping each other, all over the full community,” Guarizo says.

Going forward, the network plans to push for laws protecting migrant domestic workers and will continue to recruit and train domestic workers on their rights. They hope to eventually form a union that will be recognized by the Jordanian government.

 

Worker Rights under Siege at Oil Refinery in Kyrgyzstan

Worker Rights under Siege at Oil Refinery in Kyrgyzstan

The recent firing of a union leader at a Chinese-owned oil refinery in Kyrgyzstan is the company’s latest attempt in the past two years to prevent workers from forming a union, according to the global union IndustriALL and workers.

Kyrgyzstan, Solidarity Center, oil refinery, unions

Zhanaydar Ahmetov, leader of the trade union committee at China Petrol Company Zhongda was fired and locked out of the plant. Credit: IndustriALL

Zhanaydar Ahmetov, leader of the trade union committee at China Petrol Company Zhongda was fired and locked out of the plant on August 29, the second union leader dismissed in two years, factory workers say. Oil refinery workers created a union last December, elected Ahmetov as chairman and joined the Mining and Metallurgy Trade Union of Kyrgyzstan (MMTUK). Some 350 of the 400 Kyrgyz workers in the refinery have joined the union. Although they negotiated a contract with management in January, the company refuses to sign it.

(Take action to urge the company to reinstate Ahmetov.)

The company now is challenging the union’s registration in court. In March, management set up a company-controlled union, and workers report that managers are pressuring them to join it.

Hazardous, Even Deadly Workplace Conditions
Following Ahmetov’s dismissal, hundreds of workers rallied at the refinery, demanding his reinstatement and reiterating to management the need for improved safety and health measures, an increase in wages and a collective bargaining agreement. Workers say workplace hazards include plant machinery with instruction and warning signs posted in Chinese, posing serious and even deadly risks to the primarily Kyrgyz-speaking factory workers.

In July, management refused entry to MMWUK’s safety and health inspectors, according to workers.

MMTUK President Eldar Tadjibaev says if management will not negotiate with workers, the union will take the company’s repeated violations of labor and human rights to the Kyrgyz state prosecutor.

Workers Forced to Sign Contract Lowering Their Wages
Zhongda, which began operating in Kyrgyzstan in 2013, employs nearly 1,000 workers, including management staff. Workers first created a union in April 2014, and in May, union leader Nuraev Almazbek was fired and the union disbanded. Almazbek is suing the company over the illegal dismissal.

Last November, managers told workers if they did not sign a contract lowering their wages, their actions would be interpreted as unwillingness to work and they would be fired.

Workers also are seeking compensation for hazardous working conditions, transparency about the hazards posed by specific duties and adherence to government regulations stipulating 90 percent of the workforce be locally based.

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