Peru Construction Workers Win New Pact, Rights

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 one-year contract gives workers up to a 5 percent wage increase and includes education benefits for workers’ children up to age 22. Construction workers also will receive bonuses for hazardous work, time off when working more than 27 consecutive days on a project, and an additional 25 percent of their wage when working at night.

The FTCCP also negotiated an agreement with the Peruvian Chamber of Construction to conduct free professional training courses at the federation’s training and recreation centers in conjunction with the National Training System for the Construction Sector Ministry of Labor and Employment Promotion.

“The collective bargaining agreement benefits the workers, democracy and the country,” La Federación de Trabajadores en Construcción Civil de Perú (Federation of Civil Construction Workers of Peru, FTCCP) said in a statement.

With the new contract, FTCCP members’ average base pay will be $750 per month, and up to $1,250 per month with overtime. The vast majority of Peru’s workers, 70 percent, are employed in small and micro enterprises where workers generally earn a $250 per month minimum wage. Approximately half of workers in the construction sector are union members. Non-union workers can request “me too” clauses for their individual contracts that bring them up to the union wage scale.

In another sign of construction workers’ growing influence, Peru’s executive branch published a legislative decree in mid-August that charges police special units with preventing violence against construction workers.

More than a dozen construction union leaders have been murdered in the past five years, most recently last month, when Miguel Cotelo Villanueva was murdered leaving a union organizing meeting in Casma, Peru.

In addition, the decree takes steps to ensure safety and health on construction sites by requiring local governments to notify the police when construction permits have been filed, enabling timely workplace inspection and enforcement of labor and safety standards.

The decree also mandates that union dues must be paid by the employer into the union’s financial institution.

The FTCCP is a member of the Confederación General de Trabajadores del Perú (General Confederation of Workers in Peru, CGTP), both Solidarity Center allies.

Americas Labor Coalition: 20-Year Champion of Racial Equality

More than 60 people from Latin America—including the Dominican Republic, Chile, Colombia and Honduras—along with U.S. representatives met last week in Brazil to affirm labor’s continued commitment to racial equality through a broad-based economic justice movement, mark the 20th year of trade unions’ efforts to eliminate race-based economic inequality in the Americas, and call for Colombians of African descent to be included in peace talks in that country.

“There is a persistent, violent and dehumanizing racism in our societies. As Afro-descendants, we must continue the fight for our dignity,” said Francisco Quintino, president of the Inter-American Union Institute for Racial Equality (INSPIR), a labor coalition dedicated to fighting for racial justice in the Americas.

“This is an issue of humanity,” he said.

INSPIR has worked with trade union partners and like-minded allies across the Americas to combat racial and ethnic discrimination in the workplace and give union leaders tools to promote equality in their organizations and society since its founding by the AFL-CIO, three Brazilian national centers (CUT, Força Sindical and UGT) and the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (TUCA) in 1995.

“The tie… is our common cause of fighting racism, within the labor movement, and hopefully, too, as part of a broader social and economic justice movement for racial equality,” said Joslyn Williams, general secretary of INSPIR, who also represented the AFL-CIO at the conference as D.C. Metro Labor Council president and a trustee for the U.S.-based Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU).

Fred Redmond, vice president of the United Steelworkers (USW), also attended on behalf of the AFL-CIO and CBTU.

Delegates to the Continental Conference passed a resolution calling for Colombians of African descent to be represented in peace negotiations and post-conflict implementation in that country.

More than 150 people attended the opening ceremony of the 20th Anniversary Celebration and Continental Conference, held August 17–19, 2015, in São Paulo. Brazil’s Minister of the Promotion of Racial Equality Policies, Nilma Lino Gomes, keynoted the event.

The Solidarity Center works with INSPIR in Brazil to empower Afro-descendant workers to fight for their rights and overcome the tragic legacy of the more than 400 years of slavery, through education, collective bargaining and policy advocacy.

Migrant Workers Tell Their Stories

Migrant Workers Tell Their Stories

More than 200 participants from 45 countries took part in Labor Migration: Who Benefits? A Solidarity Center Conference on Worker Rights & ​Shared Prosperity Aug. 10-12, sharing strategies on empowering migrant workers through organizing unions and associations, reforming the often exploitative labor recruitment process and ensuring access to justice for migrant workers.

Driving the dedication, passion, commitment of the activists who assembled in Bogar, Indonesia, over these past few days are the stories of migrant workers–whose strength, resilience and hope for improving their lives fuels their search for good jobs to improve the lives of themselves and their families.

Several migrant workers described their struggles and successes, via video, throughout the conference. Here are their stories.

 

Police Block Worker Protests in Zimbabwe, Enter Union Offices

Police entered trade union offices today and, following earlier arrests blocking street protests, are creating a climate of intimidation limiting public challenge to a recent court ruling causing thousands of workers to lose their jobs, with more job losses expected.

“The mass retrenchments emanating from the Supreme Court ruling of July [17], 2015, will exacerbate an already difficult position for the working people of Zimbabwe,” says Godfrey Kanyenze, director of the Labor and Economic Development Research Institute of Zimbabwe (LEDRIZ), a Harare-based economic think tank.

Several truckloads of riot police entered offices of the country’s main trade union confederation, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), this morning in Harare, continuing a campaign of intimidation against workers protesting mass job losses.

Overwhelming police presence, and brief detention of protest organizers in Harare, prevented marches scheduled to take place across the country on Saturday. Riot police entered ZCTU offices, dispersing a crowd of protesters gathered there and detaining ZCTU Secretary General Japhet Moyo and President George Nkiwane, along with a handful of other trade union leaders preparing to lead the protests.

A ruling handed down by the Zimbabwe Supreme Court last month prompted the popular protests, organized by Zimbabwe’s largest labor federation, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU).

The ruling makes it legal for all employers to terminate workers’ contracts at any time, without offering them layoff benefits, by giving them three months’ notice. Up to 18,000 people have already lost their jobs, and more job losses are expected.

“This ruling marks the last nail on formal employment,” says Kanyenze.

In recent years there has been a dramatic shift in Zimbabwe of workers from the formal to the informal sector—where jobs are comparatively precarious, low-paid and without social protection.

Almost 95 percent of the estimated 6.3 million people in Zimbabwe’s workforce were defined as employed in the informal economy, according to a 2014 government report. And, in the three years to 2014, informal-sector employment grew by 29 percent, from 4.6 million people to 5.9 million.

Migrant Workers Empowered by Forming Unions

Migrant Workers Empowered by Forming Unions

“Organizing campaigns that are led by migrant workers themselves are making the impossible possible,” says Tefere Gebre, AFL-CIO executive vice president, succinctly summing up the discussion that opened the second day of the conference Labor Migration: Who Benefits?

“When workers come together, it doesn’t matter if you are a native or a migrant. If we don’t protect work for migrant workers, all workers are threatened.”

migrant workers, Tefere Gebre, AFL-CIO, Solidarity Center

“If we don’t protect work for migrant workers, all workers are threatened.”–AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Tefere Gebre Credit: Solidarity Center/Kate Conradt

Gebre joined panelists at the session on Migrant Worker Voice, Activism and Organizing, part of the August 10–12 Solidarity Center conference on labor migration in Indonesia.

He discussed how U.S. unions are partnering with migrant worker rights groups to win collective bargaining agreements and further empower workers, a strategy that Alejandra Ancheita, executive director of ProDESC (Project for Economic, Cultural, and Social Rights), a Solidarity Center ally, says is key to success in Mexico where she works.

Ancheita, winner of the prestigious international Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders, discussed how U.S. and Mexican labor rights organizations are working in a cross-border justice alliance to support seasonal workers in the northern state of Sinaloa.

“That has given birth to an organization of seasonal workers that includes a profound analysis of the legal framework in both the United States and Mexico that they can use in defense of their legal rights.”

migrant workers, Solidarity Center, Mexico

Alejandra Ancheita is director of the Mexico-based ProDesc, which organizes workers before they migrate so they know their rights. Credit: Solidarity Center/Kate Conradt

Key to migrant worker empowerment, Ancheita says, is organizing workers and educating them about their rights before they leave the country.

“When migrant are organized in their countries of origin, they are empowered to stand up for their rights in the destination countries,” she says. “This organizing among workers in their origin countries also helps workers have a more global perspective and more of a strategy for defending their rights.”

Myrtle Witbooi, president of the International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWF) and a former domestic worker, made the connection between organizing domestic workers and migrant workers, with both groups “undervalued, underpaid and exploited.”

“In the international domestic workers network, we have a policy to educate our domestic workers to understand they have legal rights in whatever country they are going to. As we grow, we can ensure that migrant workers are recognized. Our role is to spread this message to the world.”

migrant workers, Solidarity Center, South Africa

“We can ensure that migrant workers are recognized. Our role is to spread this message to the world.”–IDWF President Myrtle Witbooi. Solidarity Center/Kate Conradt

Witbooi, who last week was named a winner of the Global Fairness Initiative’s Annual Fairness Award, in 2013 accepted the AFL-CIO’s George Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award on behalf of the IDWF.

Rounding out the panel, Colin Rajah, coordinator and co-founder, Global Coalition on Migration, focused on the role of labor recruiters in the migration process.

The coalition, an open network of 90 members in 40 countries, brings together unions and human rights groups that agree the recruitment industry “is in dire need of fundamental changes,” says Rajah.

“As migrant workers, we need to take control of the process and do that in unity.”

Rajah says recruitment reform currently is not a high priority for the Global Forum on Migration Development (GFMD) this year, but he anticipates it will be in the next year or two and the coalition is working to ensure it is. The GFMD is a non-binding and government-led process open to United Nations member states and observers “to advance understanding and cooperation on the mutually reinforcing relationship between migration and development and to foster practical and action-oriented outcomes.”

More than 200 participants are taking part in Labor Migration: Who Benefits? A Solidarity Center Conference on Worker Rights & ​Shared Prosperity.

Follow the conference on the website and on Twitter @SolidarityCntr.

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