Jun 10, 2016
Solidarity Center allies—congressional lawmakers, policymakers, union leaders, human rights and democracy representatives and others—gathered on Capitol Hill to mark the launch of the Global Labor Program, a five-year cooperative effort by the Solidarity Center and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to promote worker rights, gender equality and democracy worldwide.
“Development cannot be sustained or inclusive without the availability of decent work,” said USAID Administrator Gayle E. Smith. “How do we reach workers? Through the Global Labor Program.
The following are photo highlights from the June 7, 2016, Washington, D.C., event.
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Mar 30, 2012
In Kyrgyzstan, as all over the world, the nature of work is changing, and protecting worker rights is more and more challenging. Although the law provides for the formation of unions, legal enforcement of worker and union rights is weak, and employers do not always respect statutory law and collective bargaining agreements. The Legal Advisory Center (LAC), established on March 12 at Kyrgyz National University, Bishkek, offers information about work-related issues and educates workers about their rights on the job.
LAC, supported by the Solidarity Center with funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, provides free consultations for workers and employers by junior professors and law students at the university. Since its inauguration, LAC has offered legal advice to more than 40 workers, mostly from the informal economy, such as market vendors, construction workers, and service employees. In addition, LAC’s legal experts have given on-site consultations for workers at restaurants and construction sites.
For the past two years, the university’s Law Institute, in cooperation with the Solidarity Center, has organized numerous conferences, seminars, and workshops aimed at addressing questions related to proposed labor law reform in Kyrgyzstan. LAC formalizes and continues this work.
The opening ceremony was attended by representatives of the parliament, judiciary, government ministries, trade unions, businesses, and international organizations. Stanislaw Cieniuch, the Solidarity Center’s country program director in Kyrgyzstan, highlighted the importance of the center to workers in all economic sectors.
“Workers have come to us with a wide variety of concerns,” said Cieniuch. “For example, our legal experts have advised a woman who wanted to know whether she had to continue paying into the social security system after changing her citizenship (she does), as well as a teacher who learned that she was entitled to severance pay after her school was downsized. The teacher told her colleagues who had also been laid off, and they received on average two months’ wages. These people are very grateful for the service that the LAC provides.”
