Make People > Profits: UN Special Rapporteur

Make People > Profits: UN Special Rapporteur

Millions of workers in the global economy have been disenfranchised from their rights, either tacitly or deliberately by governments, exacerbating “global inequality, poverty, violence and child and forced labor,” says Maina Kiai, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of assembly and of association, in a frank report presented last week to the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

UN Special Rapporteur Maina Kiai, human rights, unions, Solidarity Center

UN Special Rapporteur Maina Kiai says without freedom to form unions, workers have little power to change economic inequality. Credit: Solidarity Center

The Special Rapporteur also launched the report on workplace rights at a side event at UN headquarters, where he warned of “an assault on labor” that has been going on for years. The side event was co-sponsored by the Solidarity Center, AFL-CIO, Ford Foundation, Human Rights Watch and the International Trade Union Confederation. Shawna Bader-Blau, executive director of the Solidarity Center, facilitated the discussion.

Kiai’s report reveals that the majority of the world’s workers are sidelined, particularly women, migrant workers and people laboring at the bottom end of supply chains, without legal protections and denied a voice. Lacking assembly and association rights, he says, workers have little leverage to change the conditions that “entrench poverty, fuel inequality and limit democracy.”

Speakers at the side event confirmed that the erosion of rights in the workplace is a reality around the world. Over the course of four hours, panelists discussed freedom of assembly and association (FOAA) as it relates to fundamental human rights, working women, migrant workers and supply chains, business and human rights. Watch the video here.

Union Leaders, NGOs Describe Assaults on Worker Rights

UN, freedom of association, unions, worker rights, human rights, Solidarity Center

Union leaders and other human rights defenders discussed freedom of assembly and association and its connection to basic human rights. Credit: Solidarity Center

Kyoung-Ja Kim, vice president of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, (minute 5:15) told the packed meeting room that workers in Korea who exercise their rights “are often treated as criminals.” She described a July 2016 march in support of worker rights, which ended with a violent police response that left a 69-year-old protester dead. Police were given immunity, yet the organizer of the protest was jailed, said Kim. In addition, when crane workers tried to negotiate with their employer and were refused, they went on strike. Their union was charged with a crime and leaders were convicted.

Swaziland, Africa’s last absolute monarchy, has lost access to the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act due to non-compliance with internationally recognized worker rights, said Vincent Ncongwane, secretary general of the Trade Union Confederation of Swaziland (min. 15:12). In addition, people are losing access to land. They are being evicted for their exercise of freedom of speech. And the right to protest is limited, he said.

Monserrat Mir Roca, confidential secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation, (min. 24:16) said that the right to strike is recognized in the constitutions of many European countries, and trade unions are recognized as legal actors to negotiate for better conditions for workers.

However, “Europe is in a crisis moment, and the first thing that governments try to do is reduce the right to freedom of association, the freedom to be in a trade union and to engage in collective bargaining actions.” Globalization, she said, has also globalized the response by governments and companies to economic downturns, to the detriment of workers. Strike leaders are threatened with criminal charges and long jail sentences in Spain, for example. In response, “we are engaging all our members to defend, in national parliaments, the right to freedom of association,” she said. “Democracy is in danger the moment trade union rights are not recognized.”

It is important that Paragraph 56 of the Special Rapporteur’s report “unambiguously defends the right to strike,” including as a matter of customary international law, said Jeff Vogt, (min: 32:30), director of the legal unit at the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). He said attacks on freedom of association rights are increasing in frequency and come from surprising quarters, including the Employers Group at the International Labor Organization (ILO).

domestic workers, UN, freedom of association, human rights, Solidarity Center

“In many nations of the world … domestic workers have not been recognized as workers … or even as human beings”—Elizabeth Tang Credit: Solidarity Center

“Since 2012, we have been in a pitched battle with the Employers Group at the ILO regarding the existence—the mere existence—of the right to strike. We have all assumed that the right has existed at the international level for a very long time and, at the very least, with the entry into force of Convention 87 of the ILO, which is the convention on freedom of association.” The right to freedom of association at work assumes the right to gather together, form organizations, bargain collectively and to strike, he said. Without all of those elements together, “the right is meaningless.” Indeed, a German legal decision said that “the right to collective bargaining without the right to strike is collective begging.”

Meanwhile, domestic workers are among the least protected of workers around the world, said Elizabeth Tang, general secretary of the International Domestic Workers Federation (min. 40:16). “In many nations of the world, for generations, domestic workers have not been recognized as workers … or even as human beings,” she said. “Ninety percent of the 60 million domestic workers lack effective social protections—and that is no accident. Where domestic workers are not recognized as workers, they cannot form trade unions.”

The participation of women in the labor market has increased—but has not been the often touted  panacea for economic growth or women’s economic empowerment, according to Chidi King, director of the ITUC equality department, who moderated the panel examining issues related to working women and freedom of association (min. 49:30). On the contrary: The majority of jobs for women around the world are informal, precarious, pay poverty wages and are exploitative, with violence on the job a serious issue, she said.

UN, freedom of association, Honduras, human rights, unions, Solidarity Center

Evangelina Argueta said women garment workers in Honduras have made some gains—through their unions—in boosting wages and making workplace safer, but women in export agriculture sometimes risk their lives when exercising their rights at work. Credit: Solidarity Center

Evangelina Argueta, who coordinates maquila organizing for the General Workers Confederation (CGT) of Honduras, (min. 57:24), said that while women garment workers—through their unions—have made some gains in terms of wages and safer workplaces in Honduras, women in export agriculture are caught in more challenging and dangerous circumstances. Pregnant women have been dismissed, worker rights advocates are blacklisted and protests are criminalized. Some companies overtly thwart the formation of unions by firing labor leaders. And around the country, women organizers are receiving death threats while the state does little to protect activists.

Purna Sen, director of policy at UN Women, (min: 1:06:52), said human rights features in all the work of the organization. The issues raised in the report, she said, are particularly timely as women’s economic empowerment is the theme of the 2017 Commission on the Status of Women meeting in New York. “The interconnections of human rights, labor rights and women’s economic engagement are absolutely critical,” said Sen.

All Workers Have the Right to Collectively Bargain

UN, freedom of association, human rights, unions. ILO, Solidarity Center

Gloria Moreno-Fontes Chammartin, ILO, says the right to collective bargaining applies to all workers regardless of status for ILO member countries. Credit: Solidarity Center

Opening the panel on migration and freedom of association, Gloria Moreno-Fontes Chammartin, ILO senior labor migration specialist, (min. 1:31:22), reminded the audience that freedom of assembly and association (FOAA) are core values of the ILO, and that FOAA is included in its constitution and Declaration of 1944. She outlined the various conventions and UN declarations (e.g., the 1998 ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, which commits ILO member states to respect and promote the four categories of principles and rights at work whether or not they have ratified the relevant eight conventions on freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining, the elimination of forced or compulsory labor, abolition of child labor and the elimination of discrimination in respect to employment and occupation) that reaffirm migrant workers’ rights, regardless of migration status or nationality. For example, the right to collective bargaining applies to all workers regardless of status in ILO member countries.

Despite international labor standards and agreements, the situation for migrant workers is often dire on the ground. For example, “migrant workers make up nearly 90 percent of workers in some Gulf states, but enjoy few to no labor rights,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director for Human Rights Watch (min. 1:39:49)). She said that 15 million to 20 million people are migrant workers in the Gulf and cover every job, skill and education spectrum, with the largest concentration of migrant workers in construction and domestic work.

Most of these workers face “a triangle of oppression:” a kefala (sponsorship) system that puts the power in the hand of a private employer; the near-universal practice of employers confiscating workers’ passports of workers as “insurance”; and recruiting fees that are often a financial hardship for workers and keeps workers in bad jobs. Workers can spend two to three years working just to repay loans taken out to cover recruiting fees.

At the same time, many of the 9 million guest workers in the United States, who enter the country on special visas, are in “industries excluded from labor law, de jure or de facto,” and industries that “are of a direct lineage to slavery and are enmeshed in the same political economy of race,” said Saket Soni, director of the National Guestworker Alliance, (min. 1:49:15). Like the kefala system, a guest worker’s visa in the United States is tied to the employer, which leaves them vulnerable to abuse. Workers in seafood processing, for example, have reported grueling work conditions, forced overtime, harassment and exploitation.

In one case, Soni said, forced compulsory overtime coupled with the threat of retaliation was so severe that workers “developed the motor capacity to work while sleepwalking for entire shifts at night.” If they complained, the employer reported them to Immigration Services. In at least one case, the level of exploitation was deemed forced labor by U.S. courts.

Meanwhile, the creation of the “Asia global factory” has led to the largest rural-to-urban migration in the history of mankind, said Sanjiv Pandita, Asia regional representative for Solidar Suisse (min. 1:59:14). The global supply chain relies on an “institutionalized mechanism that harvests cheap labor,” pulling people from rural areas to factory zones.

He said workers move to escape poverty, but wind up on the lowest tier of the supply chain. They work long hours in dangerous workplaces for subsistence wages because they lack FOAA rights, while multinational corporations profit. “Asia has the largest population of working poor people. This is why we have a huge crisis of democracy because workers do not have rights to form unions and demand their fair share of the wealth being created,” he added.

‘We need to challenge the idea that supply chains are too complex to handle’

For the fourth and final panel—Supply Chains, Business and Human Rights—Cathy Feingold, director of the AFL-CIO’s international department, opened the session (min. 2:11:35) by issuing a call for a new global standard to address the more complex problems workers face, the agreements and standards that have been set aside, and the rules that were not designed for worldwide supply chains.

“How do you exercise rights when you don’t know whom you work for or if you are made invisible?” she asked. “We need mandatory due diligence in supply chains. We need to extend judicial remedy through supply chains.  We need to take this out of legal and policy discussions and make sure workers know how to use remedies. We must have new, innovative, worker-driven approaches. … And we need to recognize that we are in one, single movement.”

Amol Mehra (image in video, above), director, International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR), agreed (min. 2:22:06). “We need to challenge the idea that supply chains are too complex to handle. There are inflows and outflows, and governments can set controls to protect rights,” he said. “Communities must come together to demand the rights they deserve. To build that power, we need to tackle global power,” he said. Mehra added that governments have a duty to protect human rights—and should start conditioning benefits to companies on how those companies respect these rights, including freedom of association.

UN, HRW, Human Rights Watch, Solidarity Center, freedom of association, unions

Jo Becker, Human Rights Watch, says children produce 15 percent of world’s gold but suppliers don’t ask if child labor is involved. Credit: Solidarity Center

When it comes to supply chains and violations of human and worker rights, “the laissez-faire system of enforcement is not working. Companies intentionally go to countries with weak labor laws and weak enforcement,” said Jo Becker, (min. 2:30:52), advocacy director for Human Rights Watch’s children’s rights division, which focuses on supply chains in three sectors: clothing produced for major brand names, gold mining and tobacco. Children produce 15 percent of the world’s gold, for example.

“They climb down shafts, are involved in many dangerous processes, handle mercury causing brain damage,” she said. However, “we cannot know if a particular gold product is made with child labor. The chain of production and sale is long and complex. We find that due diligence breaks down in the earliest stages of this process. Company representatives don’t ask suppliers how gold was produced or if children were involved.” Without binding rules, some companies try to follow the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, others do not fully understand them and still others ignore them. “We believe the rules should be mandatory,” she said. “It would eliminate the race to the bottom.”

UN, freedom of association, PRODESC, human rights, Solidarity Center

Alejandra Ancheita says Mexico sees violations of human rights every day. Credit: Solidarity Center

Closing the session, Alejandra Ancheita described obstacles to freedom of association in Mexico (min. 2:38:47). The executive director of the Project of Economic, Cultural and Social Rights (ProDESC) said the country sees violations of human rights every day. For workers, “one big obstacle to freedom of association rights is protection contracts,” she said. “These are signed between companies and a management-controlled union. A real union cannot gain recognition because of this. And company profits go up by reducing pay and benefits of workers under these contracts.” Protection contracts protect companies, not workers, she said. “Good will is not enough. We must understand the ties between supply chains and joint liability” and work “to make rights a reality.”

Special Rapporteur Maina Kiai ended the discussion (min. 2:49:27) by exhorting participants to join together, to meld worker rights activism with human rights activism, including working together to ensure the right to strike is included in the general comment of the UN Human Rights Committee. “Let’s figure out a summit to bring together the human rights groups and labor. We can only succeed by coming together. … We have to protest and protest and protest,” he said. “Human rights are not neutral. They are very clear.”

Special UN Report: Worker Rights Key to Human Rights

Special UN Report: Worker Rights Key to Human Rights

Workers rights—and the freedom to form unions and freely assemble—are key to achieving human rights, according to a new report by UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association Maina Kiai. The Solidarity Center is among organizations contributing to the research.

“This report is a clear call to action to governments and employers to immediately recognize worker rights, and for the broader human rights community to advocate for them,” says Solidarity Center Executive Director Shawna Bader-Blau.

UN, United Nations, freedom of association, human rights, unions, Solidarity CenterAs the report finds: “The rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association are … key to the realization of both democracy and dignity, since they enable people to voice and represent their interests, to hold governments accountable and to empower human agency.”

The report, which will be presented to the UN General Assembly on October 20, highlights how the vast majority of the world’s workers are disenfranchised from their rights to assembly and association—rights that are fundamental to all other human rights—either by exclusion or outright oppression.

Among the findings:

  • Without assembly and association rights, workers have little leverage to change the conditions that entrench poverty, fuel inequality and limit democracy.
  • Millions of informal workers labor in global supply chains, where some of the worst abuses of freedoms of association and peaceful assembly are found—and where migrant workers are often concentrated.
  • Discrimination, abuse and relegation to jobs at the bottom of the global economy undermine women workers’ ability to join and form organizations that defend their interests.

October 21 UN Report Launch Event in New York

On October 21, following the official presentation of the report, human rights activists, trade unionists, representatives of UN agencies and other members of civil society from around the world will gather at UN headquarters in New York to discuss this seminal report with Kiai.

(RSVP at [email protected])

Panelists at the launch event at the UN will discuss freedom of association in the global economy against the backdrop of government and employer repression of trade union rights and freedoms, attacks on the right to strike and the disenfranchisement of the vast majority of the world’s workers from their fundamental human rights to organize—with a special focus on women workers, migrant workers, the business and human rights agenda and governance in an era of global supply chains.

Kiai will keynote the event, which will include speakers from unions in Swaziland, Honduras, Mexico  and beyond, along with representatives from Human Rights Watch, ITUC, the ILO, UN Women, and members of the business and human rights communities.

The event is co-sponsored by the AFL-CIO, Ford Foundation, Human Rights Watch, International Trade Union Confederation and the Solidarity Center, among others.

Read the full report.

Share Your Views on Worker Rights with the United Nations

Share Your Views on Worker Rights with the United Nations

Update: The survey is now available in Spanish and French.

La encuesta está disponible en francés y español.

L’enquête est disponible en français et espagnol.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur is partnering with the Solidarity Center to research a report on the links between the political, social, and economic exclusion of workers, their associations and trade unions. The following article from the UN Special Rapporteur website describes how you can participate.

The globalization of the world economy in the past half-century has contributed to a dramatic rise in the power of large multinational corporations and has concentrated wealth in fewer hands. State power to regulate these business entities, meanwhile, has been simultaneously eroded and co-opted by elite economic actors themselves.

Unconstrained power – whether public or private in origin – is now, more than ever, a critical threat to the protection of human rights. This power shift has created a challenging environment for the enforcement of human rights, as Special Rapporteur Maina Kiai has documented in his two most recent reports on natural resource exploitation and the imbalance between how States treat businesses and civil society.

For his next report to the UN General Assembly (October 2016), the Special Rapporteur plans to explore a new dimension of this power shift: its effect on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association of workers – specifically the most marginalized portions of the world’s labor force, such as global supply chain workers, informal workers, migrant workers and domestic workers. He will also examine the gender and racial dimensions of the issue.

The Special Rapporteur is particularly interested in the links between the political, social, and economic exclusion of workers, their associations and trade unions, as expressed in:

  1. The limitation and/or criminalization of assembly and association rights in law and in practice (and acquiescence of the State when these rights are breached by state or private actors);
  2. The exclusion of workers in the informal economy from legal frameworks recognizing assembly and association rights;
  3. The strategy to informalize more work for the purpose of limiting or excluding workers from exercising their assembly and association rights;
  4. The lack of effective global governance of migration, which has led to the exploitation of migrant workers

The Special Rapporteur will also explore the interplay between the lack of assembly and association rights for workers and the health of these rights within a society as a whole.

What’s your opinion and experience?
The Special Rapporteur convened an expert consultation to discuss this subject in May 2016. But he would also like to hear your views. He is particularly interested in specific, real-world examples of how the assembly and association rights of workers are being both eroded and bolstered. These examples may be included in the report.

How to submit information for the report
For more details on the report, please see our concept note. For specific questions that the Special Rapporteur is looking to answer, please see the following questionnaires. Note that each file has three separate questionnaires: One for UN member states, one for businesses and one for civil society/unions/workers. Please answer only the questionnaire that corresponds to your position:

Questionnaires in English

Questionnaires in Spanish (coming soon)

Questionnaires in French (coming soon)

In responding to the questionnaire, please be sure to provide as much detail as possible and to specify which countries you are referring to.

Completed questionnaires should be e-mailed to [email protected]. We will be accepting submissions until June 30, 2016. You may submit your responses in English, French or Spanish.

The Solidarity Center will assist with researching the report. Responses to the questionnaires will be shared with select Solidarity Center staff prior to the publication of the report.

UN Consultation on Worker Rights Gathers Global Experts

UN Consultation on Worker Rights Gathers Global Experts

More than two dozen worker, union and human rights experts from around the world gathered last week in Kenya to discuss some of the most intractable global labor issues: informalization of work, gender inequality, migrant worker rights and the erosion of workers’ freedoms of peaceful assembly and of association.

The two-day “Expert Consultation on Freedom of Association and Assembly for Workers” was convened by Maina Kiai, UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Association (FOAA), in collaboration with the Solidarity Center. Shawna Bader-Blau, Solidarity Center executive director, co-facilitated the meeting.

Maina Kiai, UN, Solidarity Center, freedom of association

Maina Kiai (left) opens the discussion, with Wisborn Malaya (center) representing informal workers in Zimbabwe and Phil Robertson from Human Rights Watch. Credit: UN

High-level representatives from key organizations—Asia Monitor Resource Center; Asia Network for Rights of Occupational & Environmental Victims; Escuela Nacional Sindical (ENS, National Union School, Colombia); Human Rights House Foundation; Human Rights Watch; International Center for Not-for-Profit Law; International Corporate Accountability Roundtable; International Domestic Workers Federation; International Labor Organization; International Trade Union Confederation; Kenya National Union of Teachers; Kenya Union of Domestic, Hotels, Educational Institutions, Hospitals and Allied Workers (KUDHEIHA); Labor Research Service; National Guestworkers Alliance; Proyecto de Derechos Económicos, Sociales y Culturales (ProDESC, the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Project, Mexico); Social and Economic Rights Institute of South Africa; UNITE-HERE; World Movement for Democracy; and Zimbabwe Chamber of Informal Employment Organizations—discussed the status of vulnerable workers and their rights, gender-based violence and discrimination, the ability of workers to exercise their rights to freedom of association and assembly, particularly in global supply chains.

The experts closed the meeting by looking at ways to bolster FOAA for vulnerable workers, including strengthening legal frameworks at the national level, monitoring and improving the practices of non-state actors, and establishing global governance mechanisms.

Discussions and conclusions from this consultation will feed into the Special Rapporteur’s next thematic report on the freedoms of peaceful assembly and association, which he will present to the UN General Assembly in October 2016.

“The Special Rapporteur’s focus on these very serious labor issues can have a real impact, and the organizations consulted during this kick-off meeting were excited to support the effort,” said Bader-Blau. “This is a critical moment for working people around the world, so many of whom are seeing their rights as workers deteriorate because the freedoms of association and assembly are under assault.”

UN Finally Puts Child Slavery on Development Agenda

UN Finally Puts Child Slavery on Development Agenda

Last week the United Nations passed its next set of commitments for development, the “Sustainable Development Goals,” for the coming 15 years and added important labor issues that its member states are obligated to prioritize. “This is significant,” said child labor crusader and Nobel Prize Laureate Kailash Satyarthi at the UN Summit, “because for the first time these goals include the issues of child slavery, labor and trafficking, and has brought forth the language to address them.”

Satyarthi, a longtime friend and partner of the Solidarity Center, was one of the featured speakers at a UN Interactive Dialogue, in which dozens of heads of state and UN agencies discussed the new goals. While some governments and international agencies talked up free trade as the key to addressing economic equity and growing inequality, Satyarthi—along with governments such as Sweden, Ghana and the Dominican Republic—stressed a rights-based approach to development and putting workers and their rights first.

Malala, Kailash Satyarthi, child labor, UN, Solidarity Center

Nobel Prize winners Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi talk at the UN General Assembly. Credit: Solidarity Center/Tim Ryan

“A sustainable economy and society can never be built on the foundation of slavery,” he said. “This is a new opportunity for civil society, faith organizations, governments and businesses to build genuine and innovative partnerships to make child slavery history.” Satyarthi also pointed out that the private sector “must shoulder its responsibility for the world’s children” and said that “truly visionary corporate leaders must safeguard children throughout their supply and value chain.”

Guy Ryder, secretary general of the International Labor Organization (ILO), echoed Satyarthi, saying that Goal 8—the creation of decent work—“is a key to the success of all other agendas, which depend on Goal 8.” While the incidence of child labor has dropped by about a third worldwide over the past 15 years, Ryder also called on the UN to not to spare any effort until the world is free of child and forced labor.

The inclusion of commitments to address child labor, slavery and human trafficking was the result of a multiyear lobbying and advocacy effort by the Global March Against Child Labor, Satyarthi’s organization, formed in 1997 to press for ILO Convention 182 against the worst forms of child labor. The convention has since been ratified by most countries around the world. Now the Global March and its allies have succeeded in centering the goal in the global development agenda, and advocates of justice and equity can hold governments accountable for making decent work for adults and ending child slavery the cornerstone for sustainable economic development.

Pin It on Pinterest