Fighting for safe workplaces, fair pay and dignity on the job should not be controversial – it should be common sense.​

For over 20 years, with support from the U.S. Department of Labor’s International Labor Affairs Bureau (ILAB), the Solidarity Center has helped expose and prevent child labor, break the chains of forced labor and defend workers’ rights to seek justice, fairness and safety on the job by organizing unions.

The decision to terminate funding for these programs abandons workers who risk everything to stand up against abuse and exploitation – all in search of a better life for themselves and their families, and to build stronger, fairer communities where they work and live.

Eliminating the Solidarity Center’s ILAB-supported programs will:

• • • Enable a race to the bottom where exploitation abroad lowers labor standards for everyone no matter where they live.
    • Leave workers – including children – more vulnerable to forced labor and exploitation in countries where few protections exist.
    • Silence efforts by working people to improve their conditions peacefully, by removing the only U.S. support for grassroots rights-based efforts.
    • Remove the support workers and unions need to ensure governments and corporations comply with labor standards in U.S. trade agreements – standards specifically designed to protect U.S. jobs from unfair competition and prevent outsourcing.
    • Ignore the root causes of migration: poverty wages, trafficking and unsafe work.