Aug 27, 2025
Nineteen union leaders and labor rights defenders working to advance democracy in communities around the world convened in South Africa in June as part of the Global Labor Leadership Initiative (GLLI), a multi-year Solidarity Center partnership with Cornell ILR. The GLLI connects union leaders worldwide to share strategies and build stronger movements. By defending rights, winning safer workplaces and lifting new voices into leadership, they show how democracy grows when workers have the power to shape change.
“It feels like I am not alone in this journey,” said All Nepal Health Volunteer Workers’ Union (ANHVWU) President and GLLI participant Komal Maya Lama, who accepted a completion certificate from Solidarity Center and Cornell ILR Worker Institute GLLI facilitators. Photo: Connie Mabin
“It’s amazing to know about the people all over the globe,” said young worker Komal Maya Lama, All Nepal Health Volunteer Workers’ Union (ANHVWU) president and 2025 GLLI participant. “It feels like I am not alone in this journey. I have built a beautiful bond and learned so many things from those leaders.”
Annually, the GLLI provides participants with solidarity and skills-building opportunities so they can help build a dynamic, powerful and inclusive labor movement to transform society and the economy so that it works for workers.
This year, GLLI participants from Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, the Maldives, Nepal, Nigeria, the Philippines, Serbia, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Taiwan met near Johannesburg from June 22-27 where they shared strategies to tackle in-country and mutual challenges affecting working people, often in the face of brutal conditions, and worked to strengthen global movement building.
“I’ve gained tools I can use to make my leadership more effective,” said Philippines Public Service Labor Independent Confederation (PSLINK) Deputy General Secretary and Chief of Staff Jillian Roque, who accepted a completion certificate from Solidarity Center and Cornell ILR Worker Institute GLLI workshop facilitators. Photo: Connie Mabin
“I’ve gained a lot of very practical things: tools I can use to make my leadership more effective, more strategic, more intentional–the very things we need to really make changes on the ground,” said Jillian Roque, deputy general secretary and chief of staff of the Philippines Public Service Labor Independent Confederation (PSLINK).
Democracy depends on working people and their organizations to keep it resilient, said 2025 GLLI participants, who discussed unions’ unique role and capacity to push back on unjust and undemocratic forces. Building on a 2024 retreat in Sri Lanka that focused on individual leadership assessment and development, the South Africa retreat broadened the lens to thinking about how unions can bolster their organizations and strategies across social movements. They shared approaches for defending and promoting worker rights in the face of an ever-growing assault across the globe on working people.
“Trade unions have the best position to get people really together,” said a GLLI participant who is an independent labor activist.
“Connecting with people doesn’t mean that you put people on social media and attract their attention; it is really about how you can interact with them. Trade unions are so crucial to the democratic movement for discussing issues and hearing people’s voices: To get people really together,” he said.
Worker rights are in free fall across every continent, leading the ITUC to warn this year against a “billionaire coup against democracy that now threatens democracy itself.” According to the 2025 International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) Global Rights Index, workers’ access to justice was restricted in 72 percent of countries during the reporting period, representing the worst level ever recorded.
As the largest democratic movement in the world, unions are uniquely placed to defend and expand democracy, not only through elections but in the workplace, in communities, and national and global institutions. Where independent unions provide individuals with the opportunity to elect and be leaders, and join in common cause for better wages, benefits and working hours, and where organized labor holds politicians accountable, democracy thrives.
“Unions are a school for teaching people how to organize and fight for their dignity and rights and how people get others to join them. That’s why we’ve seen unions on the forefront in defending democracy in Belarus, in Zimbabwe and eSwatini, in Hong Kong and in Tunisia,” said Solidarity Center Executive Director Shawna Bader-Blau at last year’s GLLI convening, in Washington, D.C..
Unions benefiting from their leaderships’ participation in the 2025 GLLI in South Africa included:
- Kenya’s Amalgamated Union of Kenya Metal Workers (AUKMW)
- Kenya Medical Practitioners Pharmacists and Dentists Union (KMPDU)
- Lesotho Public Employees Union (LEPEU)
- Liberia’s United Workers Union of Liberia (UWUL)
- Maldives Health Professional Union (MTUC)
- Nepal’s All Nepal Health Volunteer Workers’ Union (ANHVWU)
- Nepal’s General Federation of Nepalese Trade Unions (GEFONT)
- Nepal Trade Union Congress (NTUC)
- Nigeria’s Federation of Informal Sector Workers of Nigeria (FIWON)
- Philippines’ Associated Labor Union (ALU)
- Philippines’ Public Service Labor Independent Confederation (PSLINK)
- Serbia’s trade union confederation Nezavisnost
- Sierra Leone Domestic Workers Union (SLeDoWU)
- South Africa’s National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (NEHAWU)
- South Africa’s Federation of Unions of South Africa (FEDUSA)
- Taiwan Domestic Caretakers Union (DCU)
Jul 30, 2025
At the 2025 International Labor Conference (ILC), which took place June 2-14, the Solidarity Center and its partners showcased what happens when workers join together: they speak up and fight for better jobs—and a better world.
The ILC, the annual meeting of the International Labor Organization (ILO), brings together worker, employer and government representatives to debate policy, make decisions and negotiate new international labor standards to promote decent work.
As a result of our unique partnerships with working people and unions from around the world, workers assumed an active role throughout the ILC conference, building on our guiding principle that if working people have the freedom to organize and bargain, they will build more just, inclusive and democratic societies.
With Solidarity Center, Platform Workers Shape a Global Treaty
In Chile, Solidarity Center delegate Angelica Salgado Delgadillo heads the Cornershop Union of Uber and serves as a national councilor in the Central Unitaria de Trabajadoras y Trabajadores (CUT). Credit: Solidarity Center
Between 154 million and 435 million workers have online jobs around the world. While platform work is associated with ride hailing and delivery, a broad range of digital platform work is now happening through apps and websites.
A new ILAW Network publication, Taken for a Ride 3 – Lost in a Crowd: How Crowdworkers Are Denied Their Rights at Work, looks at how content moderators, software programmers and other digital platform workers engage in data-related tasks and yet receive no basic workplace rights.
Following years of research and advocacy for the development of a global treaty promoting decent work for app-based workers, led in part by the Solidarity Center’s ILAW Network, the ILO began the process to negotiate a first-ever Convention establishing decent work for platform workers worldwide. (Conventions are legally binding international treaties that may be ratified by member countries.)
“The Solidarity Center Rule of Law team participated actively in the negotiation for a new standard addressing decent work on digital labor platforms, while the Solidarity Center’s Organizing Department coordinated with national platform workers unions to facilitate their participation in the work of the committee,” said Jeffrey Vogt, Solidarity Center Rule of Law director, who also leads the Center’s International Lawyers Assisting Workers (ILAW) Network.
Worker delegates connected with their governments to win support and improvements in an international treaty on the rights of platform workers. Front from left: Charith Attanapola, Sri Lanka; Carina Trindade, Brazil. Rear from left: Philip Aryeh, Ghana; Mophat Okinyi, Kenya. Credit: Solidarity Center
To develop a Convention, workers, employers and government members meet in Geneva to debate and draft its content, and the June conference was the first of two such meetings. Together with digital app-based workers from seven countries, Brazil, Chile, Ghana, Kenya, India, Mexico and Sri Lanka, the Solidarity Center efforts were key to ensuring the proposed Convention and its Recommendations represented workers’ real-life experiences and concerns.
Months before the June ILC met to consider Convention proposals, Solidarity Center worked closely with the platform worker delegates, ensuring they were part of every step—contributing to the ILC’s multiple draft reports, advocating with lawmakers and engaging in training to hone their messages.
“By bringing together workers from multiple regions, the ILC served as a powerful space for South-South exchange,” said Kruskaya Hidalgo Cordero, Solidarity Center field organizing specialist. “Delegates strengthened trust, shared strategies and discussed common challenges such as ensuring labor standards cover digital platform workers.”
Building Worker Power, Democracy
With input into creating the latest draft, the involvement of the Solidarity Center conference delegates was key in discussions and in developing the most recent outline.
Closely coordinating with their unions at the conference, worker delegates provided feedback and recommendations to their government represetatives—who in turn often took supportive positions, raising key points during negotiations and in some cases, adjusting their votes.
Sergio Guerrero from Mexico was among seven platform workers collaborating with the Solidarity Center to ensure decent work in the gig economy. Credit: Solidarity Center
The result, “Decent Work in the Platform Economy,” was a commitment to a Convention and Recommendation at the end of the process, as well as negotiated definitions and some initial language on the rights of workers to obtain information on automated systems. The platform workers will continue to hone and refine drafts throughout the year, with a final Convention and Recommendation likely adopted at the next ILC in June 2026.
Through ILC participation, the Solidarity Center enabled strong worker power—and worker democracy. Going forward, as part of the Organizing Department’s global platform and broader strategy on platform work, Solidarity Center will create a dedicated space for cross-regional collaboration. Digital app-based workers will take part in a series of virtual exchanges where they will share organizing strategies—strengthening bonds and coordination across regions.
Digital app-based driver, Shaik Salauddin from India, part of the Solidarity Center delegation, frequently reaches out in social media through his union. Credit: Solidarity Center
Creating international connections at the ILC, where digital app-based workers initiated relationships with key global allies , expands connections not only for their organizing networks but also embeds platform worker issues more firmly within global union agendas.
“These interactions deepened the foundation for a worker-led international network capable of sustained collaboration beyond ILC spaces,” said Hidalgo Cordero.
Including Workers’ Voice
To ensure that workers are in the conversations around the informal economy, one Solidarity Center strategy included collaboration with Saida Ouaid, a member of the Democratic Confederation of Labor (CDT) in Morocco.
Ouaid represents agricultural workers, who are among the two billion people globally supporting themselves and their families in the informal economy—including street vendors, domestic workers and tuk-tuk drivers. These workers are not covered by “formal” economy protections, such as job safety and health or health care.
Ouaid actively participated in the ILC general discussion Addressing Informality and Promoting the Transition to Formality for Decent Work to reflect on progress made since the adoption of ILO Recommendation 204 and what else is needed to advance the transition to formality, in recognition that informality remains high.
“Being present gave me the opportunity to voice my organization’s position, which is the urgent need to improve the conditions of informal economy workers and to integrate them into a formal economy that meets the standards of decent work and dignified living,” she said.
The Solidarity Center also provided materials to union partners who sought to participate in the ILC discussions, including several from around Africa. And, the Solidarity Center coordinated positions and priorities with the International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWF), UNI Global and Women in Informal Employment Globalizing & Organizing (WIEGO), key to its efforts to build long-term alliances with global unions and other allies.
Solidarity Center delegate Saida Ouaid, a member of the Democratic Confederation of Labor in Morocco, pushed to improve conditions for 2 billion workers such as those in agriculture and street vending who are in the informal economy. Courtesy Saida Ouaid
Because working people and their union representative such as Ouaid were a key part of the discussions, they pushed back employer attempts to restrict union membership and collective bargaining to formal workers in accordance with national laws. Ultimately, the final document represents the success of working people in upholding the freedom to form unions and the right to collectively bargain as a right for “all workers” as essential for transitioning to inclusion in fundamental labor rights.
Including workers’ democratic freedom to form unions and bargain together recognizes the Solidarity Center’s core principle that unions are the democratic institutions of the working class that allow working people to stand together, speak up and bargain not only for better jobs, but for a better world.
“Attending this session was a rich and meaningful experience, through the contributions, testimonies and shared experiences of trade unions, during both the Workers’ Group meetings and the general sessions,” said Ouaid.
Workers’ Succeeded in Adding Key Rights
Working in agriculture, as a street vendor or in other jobs in the informal economy increases people’s vulnerability that typically cannot be addressed by a country’s basic labor protections. Workers at the conference were key to the adoption of new language on the necessity of employer and government accountability and creates an environment for transitioning to jobs in the formal economy that lead to worker protections.
Workers’ involvement also shaped the outcomes document so that it represents their lived experiences and the necessity for safe working conditions, by
- Acknowledging the importance of a safe and healthy working environment to decent work and
- Recognizing the role that trafficking, exploitation, stigmatization and harassment in hindering formalization efforts.
“There were a number of important provisions proposed by the workers’ group that were able to ensure the rights of informal economy workers in the final outcomes,” said Erin Radford, senior specialist in Solidarity Center’s Global Worker Empowerment Department.
“In other cases, the workers’ group was successful in eliminating harmful amendments proposed by the employers’ group or governments or in reducing the harm of the amendments. In particular, it was important to ensure nothing in these outcomes would undermine or weaken the 2015 document.”
See all the texts adopted in the June 2025 conference: Texts adopted by the International Labor Conference at its 113th Session.
Jun 3, 2025
When Enoch Gyaesayor logs into a digital app each day to begin picking up passengers and drive around Accra, Ghana, he hopes to get a few hour-long trips where he can be paid the daily top amount from Mondays to Fridays. After paying the company’s commission and job-related expenses, he says he makes 150 cedis ($14.64).
Enoch Gyaesayor, an app-based driver in Ghana, connected platform workers together in a union to build strength to improve working conditions.
But most of the time, Gyaesayor and thousands of other digital app drivers and riders are paid even less, and often work up to 16 hours a day, even sleeping in their vehicles to save petrol money going home and to be ready to start working again as quickly as possible. Higher pay on weekends does not reduce the amount of time they must work.
“There is no ‘off’ day for the driver,” Gyaesayor says, noting that he works seven days a week to support himself and his family.
In Ghana and in countries around the world, the Solidarity Center is building strength with platform workers to create a broad-based, global movement in which app-based workers join together to assert their rights, protect their lives and improve working conditions. Unions and worker organizations are making democracy real in workplaces, legislatures and global forums.
Digital Platform Work: A Growing Industry that Undercuts Labor Rights
A rapidly exploding industry, digital platform work now employs between 154 million and 435 million workers in online jobs. While often seen as a flexible job arrangement, digital app-based work is a growing business model that systematically undercuts labor rights and protections and shifts the responsibility of costs to workers.
With support by the Solidarity Center and the CGTP, digital platform drivers formed a union to collectively push for decent work and are now at the ILO in Geneva urging passage of a treaty improving work for platform workers worldwide.
Around the world, consumers depend on digital platform workers—requesting rides from Uber or Bolt, ordering meals from Zomato, receiving groceries delivered from Glovo, or viewing content on a social media platform. The online platform acts as an intermediary between the worker and the employer. For most workers, these jobs are not a “side gig”–they are full-time work.
Yet app-based workers in Ghana and in most countries worldwide are defined as “independent contractors,” and so not covered by national labor laws, such as a country’s minimum wage.
Some 3 billion consumers used online food delivery service—groceries and meals—in 2024. Although global food delivery alone was an estimated $380.43 billion in 2024, the workers transporting the food, driving passengers and moderating online content receive little pay and no safe and healthy working conditions.
Joining Together to Improve Job Conditions
Gyaesayor and other platform workers in Ghana say their top concern is to decrease the percentage of the commission app-based companies require drivers to pay. Uber takes 35 percent from workers’ pay; Bolt, 27.5 percent and Yango up to 25 percent.
The commission fee is only a portion of what workers must pay. With available cars scarce in Ghana, some companies “rent” cars to drivers, adding to a worker’s expense, which also includes mobile phone data, petrol and repairs.
Delivery drivers say they suffer from exhausting workdays, low pay and poor health conditions. Credit: Paloma Luna
Algorithms, which often incorrectly determine distance, time and types of trips offered, further decrease pay. Workers operate at the will of the algorithm and have little recourse to find out why they are locked out of jobs or why kilometers are incorrectly calculated.
“There is a lot of uncertainty and lack of consistency when it comes to rides, how much you will get paid, and so on,” he says.
Gyaesayor, now general secretary of the Digital Transport Workers Union (DTWU), began joining together digital app workers by talking with platform drivers at car parks and shopping malls, urging them to come together to improve their conditions. Several associations representing couriers and other digital workers formed a small association in the Accra and Ashanti regions, By 2023, they created DTWU with a broader reach, joining the Ghana Trades Union Congress (GTUC).
Improve Working Conditions by Joining Together
The digital app union in Ghana, which includes car and bicycle drivers and couriers, is among dozens of platform worker unions around the world, with workers joining together to achieve key goals, including:
- Minimum wage standards.
- Safe working environments.
- Basic social protections such as annual leave, sick leave and retirement benefits.
- Labor law coverage in their countries grants them the same rights as all workers.
To gain these basic rights, workers are engaging in legal action to win unpaid wages, receive compensation for job-related injuries and establish safe working conditions. And, they are mobilizing to improve national and local laws.
Food delivery riders improved pay at FoodPanda in Cebu, Philippines, part of platform workers’ efforts to assert their rights, protect their lives and improve working conditions.
across the globe.
Earlier this year in Mexico, app-based workers campaigned for — and won! — legislative reform that recognizes them as workers and provides access to accident insurance, pensions, maternity leave and company profits. In the Philippines, food delivery riders are improving benefits around the islands. In Cebu, Foodpanda drivers will receive a base fare of 55 pesos (94 cents) and the company will recognize them as employees.
Now, the workers are joining together to take their demands internationally.
Platform Workers Take Global Action
This week, platform work will be formally addressed for the first time on a global stage. At an International Labor Organization (ILO) conference in Geneva, digital app workers and representatives from business and governments are shaping a new international treaty, Realizing Decent Worker in the Platform Economy.
At an ILO conference in Geneva, digital app workers and representatives from business and governments are shaping a new international treaty to ensure decent work for platform workers around the globe.
Digital app workers have been crafting content that delegates will consider, and joining meetings with the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and taking part in a six-day regional workshop in Togo by the ITUC-Africa. Platform workers also are involved in legislative strategies, meeting with their government representatives in advance of the conference.
Charith Attanapola, an app driver in Sri Lanka, met with the country’s minister of labor to convey platform workers’ challenges and discuss ways the government can improve working conditions.
“One of the key takeaways from our discussion was the government’s openness to ensuring decent work across all labor sectors, including app-based transport workers and delivery personnel,” says Attanapola.
Attanapola is part of the Solidarity Center delegation, which includes workers from Brazil, Chile, Ghana, India, Kenya and Mexico. As these workers testify, negotiate and help shape international labor standards that reflect the reality of their work and their demands, they understand the urgency in ensuring how jobs are shaped will determine the future.
In Ghana, where youth unemployment improved from 16.3 percent in 2000 to 5.4 percent in 2024, Gyaesayor knows that gain can be sustained only if decent work is available.
“Platform work has given employment to the majority of the youth; yet those of us who are working are being used like slaves, we get paid barely any salary,” says Gyaesayor. “The government must listen to the union, or things will get much worse; a lot of youth are going to be unemployed.”
Oct 28, 2024
More than 200 International Lawyers Assisting Workers Network (ILAW) members gathered in Casablanca, Morocco, October 9 to 11 at their 2024 Global Conference to share ideas and to collaborate on legal strategies to promote and defend worker rights.
The Solidarity Center established the ILAW Network in 2018 as a way for pro-labor lawyers worldwide to bring together legal practitioners and scholars in an exchange of ideas and information in order to best represent the rights and interests of workers and their organizations wherever they may be.
ILAW lawyers working together have taken legal strategies that are successful in one country and deploy them elsewhere. In doing so, they have set new legal precedents that build a stronger foundation for the expansion of worker rights around the globe.
Credit: Mosa’ab Elshamy
Solidarity Center Executive Director Shawna Bader-Blau welcomed attendees, describing the network of over 1,300 members in more than 90 countries as “uniquely situated to take on global corporations suppressing worker rights.”
She cited the successful advocacy of women labor lawyers for new International Labor Organization (ILO) treaties, like Convention 189 on domestic workers and Convention 190 on violence and harassment.
Solidarity Center Rule of Law Director and ILAW Network Chair Jeffrey Vogt laid out the conference’s purpose. “Around the world, the rights of workers and unions are under attack. Employers are well-resourced and coordinated in their efforts to shape law and policy. It is essential that workers and unions do the same. Through ILAW, we can learn from each other, build from successes and failures, and strengthen our impact through legal solidarity.”
Credit: Mosa’ab Elshamy
The importance of interconnectedness was woven throughout many plenary sessions and discussions. Networking, learning from and collaborating across countries and regions was a key part of the conference, as attendees talked about the commonalities of their work.
The opening plenary, moderated by Solidarity Center’s Rule of Law Deputy Director Monika Mehta, focused on the impact of technology in the world of work, including but not only digital platform workers, from Amazon warehouses workers to content moderators for major social media firms.
Panelist Liz Lenjo described the content moderators in Kenya who filed a lawsuit against Meta (the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and Threads) and Sama, the local contractor, citing poor working conditions, union busting and inadequate mental health support.
These workers were hired to screen posts, videos and messages for Facebook and remove harmful or offensive content. Workers spent hours viewing violent and disturbing images and videos. They were left on their own to deal with the psychological trauma. In a landmark ruling, the Kenyan court determined it had jurisdiction over Meta.
Credit: Mosa’ab Elshamy
Sandra Muñoz discussed how women in Colombia’s parliament recently passed legislation to harassment in the workplace and linked the fight for equality to equality for all. “Unless we can overcome inequality,” Muñoz said, “we can’t overcome inequality as a whole.”
Kayan Leung also described successful litigation she undertook in South Africa to establish parity in paid parental leave in order that the responsibility of care does not default to women. The ILAW Network filed an amicus brief in that case.
During the panel on Just Transition, Angelica Maria Palacios Martinez spoke about the efforts to get Colombia’s government to recognize trade unions’ essential role in Just Transition and protecting the whole population. “From the trade union world, we have called out the government to recognize us as a key player, she said, “so that these public policies are focused on protecting the entire population, and in particular, protecting the workers.”
Abdullah Nahid of the Maldives, one of the countries most affected by climate change, described union efforts to support workers in the tourism and fisheries sector.
On the panel on the informal economy, Madhulika Tatigotla discussed the growth of the informal economy in India. India’s informal economy continues to grow, as the formal sector continues to informalize as, for example, 40 percent of factory workers are now on temporary contracts. Recently, workers and their legal advocates developed a comprehensive draft law for workers in the informal economy to extend labor rights and benefits.
In the final right to strike plenary, Paapa Danquah noted the increasing international threats to the right to strike, linking it to civil liberties. “The attack on the right to strike on the international level is the first step to taking away the right to strike everywhere,” Danquah said. “Whenever you see attacks on the right to strike, there are also attacks on collective bargaining and civil liberty.” He described how the ITUC was involved in litigation before the International Court of Justice to protect the right to strike as a principle of international law.
As the conference ended, attendees discussed priorities for the coming year, from more collaboration between all members to deepening national and regional labor law networks, cross-pollination between ILAW regions, increasing engagement with social movements and Indigenous communities in order to support union growth. Attendees left the conference energized and committed to forging a robust labor law network for a stronger global labor movement.
