Since the start of 2019, more than 2,000 migrant workers from Kyrgyzstan have joined together to protect their rights abroad through the new Migrant Workers’ Union. On October 17, more than 100 union delegates came together in the town of Isfana, Kyrgyzstan, for the union’s founding congress.
Newly elected deputy chairwoman of the Migrant Workers’ Union, Batyrova Kanykey, addresses more than 100 delegates at their founding congress. Credit: Elena Rubtsova
The congress marks a crucial step as the union establishes itself as a leading support system for migrant workers from Kyrgyzstan. Delegates cast their votes to elect union leadership and planned activities and outreach to more workers in the coming year.
Workers from across three regions of western Kyrgyzstan—Batken, Jalal-Abad and Osh—worked together to build this new organization, with support from the Solidarity Center and Insan-Leilek, a local foundation that provided assistance to migrant workers from Kyrgyzstan over the last five years. The union has also garnered support from the Germany-based Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and Caritas France.
Insan-Leilek celebrated the milestone with a video in Russian.
Protecting Workers Abroad
Migrant workers from Kyrgyzstan, and from around the world, often face discrimination, exploitation and unsafe working conditions when they arrive in their destination countries. In Russia, a common destination for Kyrgyz migrants, workers have reported working without official contracts or having their wages stolen, with few opportunities to stand up for their rights and hold their employers accountable. Kyrgyz workers also travel to Kazakhstan, Germany and elsewhere for work. Many stay year-round, while others travel back and forth each year for seasonal jobs.
“A large number of labor migrants are subjected to exploitation and violation of their rights by employers, employment agencies and other intermediaries,” says Gulnara Derbisheva, a human rights activist in Kyrgyzstan and the leader of Insan-Leilek. “They face abuse of authority by the police and other officials. In some cases, labor migrants are victims of trafficking and forced labor.”
Since 2015, the Solidarity Center and Insan-Leilek have held pre-departure trainings for working women and men who are preparing to migrate abroad, most of them to Russia. Through these trainings, thousands of migrants have learned about their rights and the protections they have under Russian labor law. Armed with this knowledge, many workers have started exercising their rights the moment they arrive at their new jobs.
Many migrants have used their knowledge of Russian labor law to negotiate higher wages and overtime pay. Others have worked with their employers to ensure they have fully signed contracts that specify their working conditions and document their ability to work in the country. Migrant women have also learned how to protect their rights, including avoiding human traffickers and reporting workplace harassment.
The Solidarity Center also provides training participants with contact information for local legal support in their destination countries. Through hotlines and free consultations, workers can seek legal help if or when they encounter issues on the job, such as wage theft and harassment.
The Solidarity Center’s pre-departure trainings have also shown migrants how they can join trade unions to further protect their rights, even when they are working abroad. As a result, workers decided they should create their own union so they could tailor it to support Kyrgyz migrants.
Migrant Workers Organizing for Justice
The creation of the Migrant Workers’ Union, its members say, is not just timely but also necessary to protect their rights at a time when more than one-fifth of Kyrgyz citizens are living and working abroad.
Gulzat, a delegate at the congress from the village of Boz-Adyr in the Batken region, first heard about the union at a training session the Solidarity Center and Insan-Leilek held in her village earlier in 2019. “I learned many important things about my labor rights and how they could be protected,” she says. “It was then that I decided to join the Migrant Workers’ Union because I am going back to work in Russia.”
Gulzat first went to work in Russia in 2010, where she experienced wage theft firsthand. “I became a dishwasher in a Moscow cafe and was a victim of fraud when I was left without a salary,” she explains. “I didn’t know where to turn for help, but now I know.”
The Migrant Workers’ Union currently has 2,150 members. But the union’s protections extend beyond just its members. Migrant workers from Kyrgyzstan rely on decent wages not only for themselves but also to support their families back home. Migrant workers from Kyrgyzstan remitted an estimated $2.48 billion in 2018, about 34 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. Since 2017, Kyrgyzstan has been the most remittance-dependent country in the world, and remittances are particularly important in its western regions like Batken. As migrant workers learn to defend their rights abroad, they also ensure their families in Kyrgyzstan can have more economic security and access more opportunities at home.
“Everybody needs their union,” says Gulzat. “Especially migrants.”
Jaime Atilio Rodríguez, a union leader and human rights activist in Honduras, was found alive yesterday after being kidnapped and apparently tortured.
Rodríguez, former president of the Union of Middle School Teachers (COPEMH), disappeared October 28 on the way to the bus in Tegucigalpa’s historic center, according to the Committee of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees in Honduras (COFADEH).
He was rescued after being bound and dumped near the Choluteca River, his neck slashed. He was treated and released yesterday from the hospital.
“They cut his throat, kidnapped him and threw him into the river,” said Rodriguez’ wife Martha de Rodríguez, who spoke with COFADEH.
According to the Network Against Anti-Union Violence in Honduras, which tracks attacks on worker rights defenders, including union members and leaders, Rodríguez could have been targeted because of his activism as a land rights defender, his stance against electoral fraud, his recent opposition to proposed government privatization of essential public services, or some combination of the three. Tens of thousands of people have taken part in protests since April, when the government announced deep cuts to education and health services.
Spending on education and culture has dropped from 33 percent of the national budget to 20 percent over the past decade, with wages and infrastructure spending frozen. Some 40 percent of emergency rooms have inadequate medical coverage, according to the Honduras National Commission for Human Rights. Educators and health care workers say privatizing health and education systems will further decrease services and lead to layoffs.
The assault on Rodríguez also was meant to send a signal to others engaged in social protests, according to the Network, which says members of some of the country’s teacher unions have been harassed and intimidated for their involvement in the protests, with the president of another teacher union repeatedly threatened and nearly kidnapped. The Network is a Solidarity Center partner.
The teacher unions are members of the Platform for the Defense of Health and Public Education, a coalition of union and community organizations, which led the protests this past spring against cuts to public services. Security forces repeatedly responded by firing at protesters with live ammunition and tear gas.
Teachers demanded Rodríguez’s safe return in protest downtown. Credit: Network Against Anti-Union Violence
Immediately following his disappearance, Rodríguez’s colleagues at COFADEH protested in downtown Tegucigalpa with signs demanding his safe return.
Edwin Hernández, a leader of a teachers union (Colpedagogosh), also active in the Platform for the Defense of Health and Public Education, took part in protest by teacher union activists demanding Jaime’s return.
“We are here demonstrating before our society so that society realizes what is happening to our friend Jaime, who is so valuable to the popular struggles in our country,” he said.
From his hospital bed, his throat visibly cut, Rodríguez agreed with a colleague who told him, “We won’t step back,” adding, “Onward!”
In 2012, the AFL-CIO and 26 Honduran unions and civil society organizations filed a complaint under the labor chapter of Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). The complaint, filed with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Trade and Labor Affairs, alleges the Honduran government failed to enforce worker rights under its labor laws. In an October 2018 report, the U.S. Trade and Labor Affairs office said Honduras had made no progress on any of the emblematic cases since 2012.
In a recent letter to the U.S. Labor Department and U.S. Trade Representative, several members of Congress expressed “deep concern” regarding Honduras’s “continued violation” of CAFTA’s labor chapter, and noted that despite some progress, Honduras “continues to commit serious violations of the labor chapter on a regular basis.”
Three trade unions representing Kenya’s formal-sector workers in food, health, education and metals signed memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with informal worker associations in their respective sectors yesterday. The agreements formalize efforts by affiliates of the Central Organization of Trade Unions-Kenya (COTU-K) to organize workers in Kenya’s outsized and growing informal sector and make union representation of 5,600 newly organized informal workers official. With these agreements, for the first time, Kenya’s trade unions have brought informal-sector workers such as vendors, cleaners, autobody workers and mechanics under the union umbrella, giving them access to the country’s legal framework that protects formal workers.
“We are so excited. We have a dependable partner. Things will get better for us from now on,” said Grogon/Ngara Food Vendors Association Chairman Peter Ndirangu.
The agreements were signed during a public ceremony on October 29, 2019. Signatory organizations include the Kenya Union of Commercial, Food and Allied Workers (KUCFAW), Kenya Union of Domestic, Hotels, Educational Institutions, Hospitals and Allied Workers (KUDHEIHA) and the Amalgamated Union of Kenya Metal Workers (AUKMW) together with their respective informal worker associations.
“We will walk together; we will fight together; we will learn together,” said AUKMW General Secretary and COTU-K Women’s Committee National Chair Rose Omamo—who is also a former mechanic.
The Informal sector represented almost 84 percent of total employment in Kenya in 2018 and increased by more than 5 percent from 2014–2018, to 14.9 million people. In the financial year ending June 2018, more than 80 percent of new jobs were created in the informal sector while only 16.4 percent were created in the formal sector.
“The three unions are not waiting until they have no more members, they are aggressively organizing informal workers,” said United Domestic Workers of America AFSCME Local 3930 Executive Director Doug Moore, who attended the signing in a show of solidarity by his local’s 91,000 members. Moore is also a member of the Solidarity Center’s Board of Trustees.
Informal associations represented in the agreements include the Ambira Jua Kali Association, the Eastleigh Hawkers Association, Grogon/Ngara and Muthurwa food vendors, the Migingo Mechanics Self Help Group and the Nairobi Informal Sector Confederation (NISCOF).
Until now, working women and men in Kenya’s informal economy have been left outside the legal framework that protects formal workers, and so they have little power to advocate for themselves. Solidarity Center partner COTU-K has focused increasingly in recent years on organizing and formalizing workers in the informal sector with the goal of protecting all workers’ livelihoods and ensuring safe and secure work for all.
A decline in the number of formal jobs is a global trend. Working women and men in the informal economy—among them, day laborers, domestic workers, kindergarten teachers, sugarcane cutters and call center workers—now comprise the majority of the workforce in many countries. The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that two billion people hold jobs in the informal labor market, with the largest percentage of these jobs being in low-income countries.
The Solidarity Center is part of a broad-based movement to help workers come together to gain the knowledge and confidence to assert their rights and raise living standards. In 35 countries, we provide trainings and programs to help precarious workers better understand their rights, organize unions to mitigate job vulnerabilities, and learn to bargain for improved conditions and wages.
More than 100 worker rights lawyers from around the world will identify common challenges, share successes and plan strategic partnerships next week in Mexico City at the first International Lawyer Action Network (ILAW) conference.
“The ILAW Network’s inaugural conference in Mexico City aims to bring together lawyers from around the world to construct bottom-up strategies to promote and defend the rights of workers, associations and unions,” says Jeff Vogt, Solidarity Center Rule of Law director and ILAW board chair. “With workers facing constant attacks worldwide, it is more critical than ever that their advocates provide the best support possible.”
The Solidarity Center launched ILAW in December 2018 as a global hub for worker rights lawyers to facilitate innovative litigation, help spread the adoption of pro-worker legislation and defeat anti-worker laws. Since then, more than 350 hundred individuals and organizations from more than 50 countries have joined, most recently from the Nigerian Labor Congress.
“ILAW is needed now more than ever to effectively represent workers across borders,” says Ruwan Subasinghe, International Transport Workers’ Federation legal adviser and founding member of the ILAW Advisory Board, which includes 20 lawyers from 20 countries with expertise on a broad range of legal matters.
“This conference gives progressive worker rights lawyers a much-needed opportunity to learn from each other, build networks and strengthen cooperation.”
Globalizing Strategies to Protect Worker Rights
Participants from dozens of countries at the November 4–5 conference will discuss corporate accountability in supply chains, migrant and informal worker rights, the employment relationship, employment discrimination in all its forms, and workers’ right to exercise freedom of association.
In sharing success stories, legal advocates, who have been instrumental in ensuring workers achieve justice, seek to take their victories globally.
In 2018, for instance, worker rights lawyers won a key victory in Thailand, where a court dismissed criminal defamation charges against 14 migrant workers from Myanmar who faced jail time after reporting abusive working conditions on a poultry farm. The workers left the farm in 2016 and filed a complaint with the National Human Rights Commission of Thailand describing forced overtime, unlawful salary deductions, passport confiscation and restrictions on movement.
“I see the ILAW network as a basis of strategic development of lawyers practicing labor law worldwide, as a source of sharing best practices and the opportunity to bring each other’s knowledge home to our countries to determine its best implementation,” says Raisa Liparteliani, vice president of the Georgian Trade Union Confederation (GTUC) and founding ILAW Board member.
The conference will enable participants “to share best practices and challenges of lawyers from different countries and build the common strategy for worker rights protection, covering not only litigation but advocacy campaigns, law making process, awareness raising and more,” she says.
Follow Solidarity Center on Twitter and Facebook for updates throughout the conference.
Freedoms on the Move, a new report by Solidarity Center and CIVICUS, makes clear that many migrant workers and refugees want to have a say in their communities and their workplaces, and in the decisions that affect their lives—and is an urgent call to action for unions and other civil society groups to include migrant workers and refugees in advancing these rights. Download here.
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According to the Network Against Anti-Union Violence in Honduras, which tracks attacks on worker rights defenders, including union members and leaders, Rodríguez could have been targeted because of his activism as a land rights defender, his stance against electoral fraud, his recent opposition to proposed government privatization of essential public services, or some combination of the three. Tens of thousands of people 
