Nov 5, 2015
Workers once again gave their lives for their jobs when a plastic bag factory collapsed in Lahore, Pakistan, yesterday, killing at least 21 and injuring dozens. Between 150 and 200 workers, including child laborers, were in the factory when the building collapsed. Rescuers, who mostly include members of the Pakistan Army, report hearing voices in the rubble, and family members say they have received calls from relatives trapped in the debris. With limited on-the-ground rescue capacity, the Army-led rescue operation has saved many workers trapped under the debris.
Workers at the Rajput Polyester plastic bag factory reported cracks in the production floors to management after a 7.5-magnitude earthquake hit the country October 26, according to Solidarity Center sources and media reports. When workers brought the cracks to the management’s attention, they reportedly were told managers work under the same roof.
According to Al Jazeera, “Chief doctor Zia Ullah of Jinnah Hospital, where some injured have been taken, said most of the victims were young workers, with many suffering head injuries and fractured limbs.” News photos from a variety of outlets confirm that children are among those killed in the collapse.
Workers at the factory did not have a union. Factory operations run 24 hours, seven days a week, with three shifts each comprised of some 150 workers. Rajput is located in the Sundar Industrial Estate, an export processing zone in Raiwind, 28 miles from Lahore. No factories in the industrial estate have unions that are not employer-run. The zone’s small hospital could accommodate only a few of the injured, Solidarity Center sources say.
Pakistan has not ratified the International Labor Organization (ILO) convention on the right to a safe and healthy work environment. In 2012, more than 300 workers were killed when fire swept through a textile factory complex in Karachi.
A 2013 report on unsafe working conditions in Pakistan and Bangladesh factories pointed out that workers’ lack of freedom to form unions and bargain collectively to improve working conditions underlies such deadly environments.
“Under different conditions, worker representatives could be expected to address this issue with factory management, but in both Pakistan and Bangladesh, factory owners generally refuse to allow trade unions into their factories.”
(For news about working people in Pakistan, check out Labour Watch Pakistan.)
Nov 5, 2015
Houcine Abassi, secretary general of the Tunisian General Labor Union (Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail, UGTT), which shares this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, write today in The Guardian that “awarding the Nobel Prize to an organization led by the Tunisian labor movement was a recognition of the essential and potentially transformative role of labor in all of our nations.”
“Strong unions make strong democracies,” they continue. “It sounds simplistic, but each of us have experienced this fundamental premise in our nations. As labor leaders in the United States and Tunisia respectively, we know full well that when workers come together for a voice on the job, it boosts the economy, eases social unrest and creates the conditions for peace, prosperity and the protection of rights.
To be sure, we come from very different countries, each with its own set of economic and political challenges. But we have seen the healing power of unions firsthand.”
Read their full op-ed here.
Nov 2, 2015
The Tunisian General Labor Union (Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail, UGTT), a longtime Solidarity Center partner, was at the forefront of the four organizations that recently won the Nobel Peace Prize, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler said today. In a ceremony at the AFL-CIO honoring UGTT Secretary-General Houcine Abassi, Shuler praised Abassi’s courage and tenacity and called the UGTT’s work “inspirational to us in the United States.”
![Tunisia, Abassi, UGTT, Nobel Prize, Liz Shuler, Solidarity Center](https://www.solidaritycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Tunisia.Houcine-Abassi-UGTT-sec-gen-and-Liz-Shuler.11.2.15.kc_-300x199.jpg)
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler welcomed UGTT Secretary-General Houcine Abassi in a ceremony honoring his work. Credit: Solidarity Center/Kate Conradt
In his remarks, Abassi said “the Nobel Prize is not given just to us, but to all the labor movements in the world.” The award “sends a message that unions can play an equal role in government, in social dialogue … and many times can provide critical leadership.” Abassi is in Washington, D.C., this week to receive the Fairness Award presented by the Global Fairness Initiative. Solidarity Center ally Myrtle Witbooi, general secretary of the South African Domestic Service and Allied Workers Union, is a co-recipient of the award.
In October, the Nobel Committee recognized the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet—comprised of the (UGTT); the Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts; the Tunisian Human Rights League; and the Tunisian Order of Lawyers—for establishing “an alternative, peaceful political process at a time when the country was on the brink of civil war.”
Abassi described the many hours of dialogue in the months after the 2011 Arab uprising deposed longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and ushered in a period of economic and political uncertainty. As a key participant in the discussions, the UGTT succeeded in including collective bargaining rights and the right to strike in the country’s new constitution, which Tunisians approved in 2014. Through the UGTT’s efforts, the constitution also enshrines many more fundamental social and economic rights for Tunisians.
The Tunisian union movement has been in the forefront of the struggle for democracy and social equality since its formation in 1946. Following the country’s independence from colonial rule in 1956, the organization played a key role in establishing a road map for national development that made Tunisia the most advanced economy in the Arab Maghreb.
In the months after the 2011 uprising, the UGTT employed direct action when mass mobilization was needed to shore up democratic principles like women’s rights and freedom of speech, all top priorities for Tunisian unions.
“Ever since its founding, the UGTT went very much beyond the traditional role of labor unions,” pushing for freedom and democracy and inclusive participation of all civil society in governance, Abassi said.
This is the second consecutive year that worker rights activists and Solidarity Center allies have been honored with a Nobel Peace Prize. Last year Kailash Satyarthi, head of the Global March against Child Labor, shared the prize with girls’ education activist Malala Yousafzai.
In 2012, the UGTT received the AFL-CIO’s 2012 George Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award along with the labor federation of Bahrain, the General Federation of Bahrain Trade Unions, for their mobilization of thousands of people in their countries to carry forward a message of social justice during the 2011 uprisings.
Oct 30, 2015
Nhlanhla Mabizela says he first truly grasped the meaning of gender inequality on a winter day in the dusty streets of Alexandra Township in post-apartheid South Africa.
Cutting through an alley surrounded by houses made of iron scrap and plastic sheets, Mabizela and a friend came across a group of children playing. All were barefoot in the cold, with a single layer of clothes he assumed were the only ones they owned.
“Guess the first thing that popped in our minds?” asks Mabizela, Solidarity Center program officer for gender. “Where are the mothers of these children?” Seconds later, he and his friend encountered groups of men sitting around a fire, drinking and laughing. Nearby, they also saw a woman doing laundry in a large corrugated bathtub, her hands immersed in icy water.
“There and then we had the answer to our question and a new one was born and it was, ‘What is happening in the mens’ minds?’ That was the day when it dawned on me that gender inequality is alive and some of us are quite comfortable with it.”
Solidarity Center Helps Unions Put Gender Equality into Practice
Solidarity Center programs around the world address gender inequality at the workplace and within unions and society. In South Africa, Mabizela holds trainings to empower women to join unions and take leadership roles and advocate for themselves and their families. Crucially, his workshops also focus on helping men understand cultural expectations and how those assumptions shape male leadership roles that are based on excluding women.
Mabizela’s work highlights a frequent dichotomy. Unions are key drivers in advancing gender equality. Yet in many countries around the world, there is a disconnect between labor union policy and practice in transforming gender inequalities within their own structures. Through the lens of the South African union movement, a new report commissioned by the Solidarity Center explores the disconnect and examines new strategies for closing the gap between policy and practice.
“Putting Union Gender Equality into Practice: The Role of Transformational Leadership” describes how “feminist leadership” can be encouraged within the South African trade union context in part by creating a democratic organizational culture and an environment that supports women workers in their struggle for emancipation and assists men to free themselves from patriarchal forms of power.
“We have internalized and institutionalized gender roles and the division of labor,” says Mabizela. “We have failed as a country to interrogate patriarchy and hence we will move four steps forward and six steps backwards. We are so immersed in the debates about political power at the expense of all the other oppressions in sexism.”
‘Everything Is Structured around Men’
South African unions and federations long have sought to redefine and reshape patriarchal structures, cultures and practices to better inhere gender equality. Beginning in 2005, several South African unions sought to develop alternative models of power after recognizing that male-dominated, hierarchical, union culture does not easily address such issues as violence against women and sexual harassment of women within the union. They took part in Gender at Work’s South African Gender Action Learning Program to employ gender-inclusive and accountable power building and power sharing.
Authors of the new study interviewed the men who took part, and reported that they expressed an appreciation of how, by challenging male stereotyped behaviors and aspects of patriarchal power relations, they have enriched their private and public relationships and strengthened their commitment to gender equality.
“The much broader question is the need to look at how male culture influences everything—how everything is structured around men,” says John Apollis, a leader from the General Industrial Workers Union (GIWUSA) who is quoted in the report. “We need a fundamental reorganization of the union otherwise we are not going to get far with breaking male dominance.”
Some of the men also noted they struggle with alienation by their peers, who see their efforts to incorporate gender equality in the union and at home as setting them apart from traditional male roles.
‘I Would Not Like to Rehash What Our Fathers Did’
Mabizela says he was aware of gender inequality even in childhood, when the girls would “disappear” after school to wash dishes or clean house, while the boys played outside.
But the winter day in Alexandria Township spurred him to “reflect on how easy it was for us (me and my friend) both men, to put the burden of care squarely on women’s shoulders and be oblivious to the effects of gender-based violence. That day still exists in many parts of this world and not only in shanty towns of South Africa, but also in the leafy suburbs of the affluent.”
As Solidarity Center gender program officer, Mabizela also works with other organizations to campaign for passage of national laws, like a minimum wage for South Africa’s 1 million domestic workers which became law last December. Parliament currently is considering an expanded maternity leave law that incorporates significant input by the Solidarity Center.
He works with four South African union federations on the International Trade Union Confederation’s Labor Rights for Women Campaign and assists federations in developing sexual harassment policies and gender policies. He brings to his work experience as a peer educator for me at Planned Parenthood of South Africa and as a program officer for EngenderHealth’s Men as Partners Program.
In striving to embody the change essential for advancing gender equality in South Africa, Mabizela is blazing a trail for others. When describing the influences that motivate his work, Mabizela says he often thinks about how much he yearned to have a father in his life when he was a child—an experience he later learned was not uncommon.
Now, as the father of an 11-year-old son, Mabizela says, “the thought that I would not like to rehash what our fathers did, motivates me to do the work that I do. Observing my son grow, and developing confidence and not being afraid to show his emotions—it is enough motivation to carry on for his sake and the betterment of our societies.”
Oct 29, 2015
Uzbek labor rights activist Dimitry Tikhonov says his home office has been burned and all the equipment and documentation he collected on Uzbekistan’s use of forced labor in the country’s cotton harvests has been destroyed. No other room in his home was touched by the fire, he says.
![Uzbekistan, Dimitry Tikhonov, Solidarity Center, forced labor, cotton harvest](https://www.solidaritycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Uzbekistan.Dimitry-Tikhonov.hrw_-300x180.jpg)
Labor rights activist Dimitry Tikhonov says his home office was burned, destroying all his documentation on forced labor in Uzbekistan. Credit: Human Rights Watch
“All papers and files containing materials from my human rights work, including forced labor, were completely burned,” he says. “My entire legal library, which I have collected over years, is completely destroyed.”
Tikhonov says the fire occurred October 20, when he was away from his home in Angren, a city near the capital, Tashkent. He reported the incident after he returned. A metal box in which he kept a backup computer hard drive was intact, but the hard drive was missing from the case. Some 100 copies of a legal guide on child labor and forced labor that he created also disappeared, although they were in a room untouched by the fire.
The International Trade Union Confederation sent a letter to Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov condemning the attack.
In late September, Tikhonov was arrested and beaten by police as he took photos of some 20 busloads of teachers and school employees forced into the cotton fields for the annual harvest.
Doctors brought in to examine Tikhonov said he had no injuries, and police officers told Tikhonov to sign a statement attesting that he had no complaints about the police. Tikhonov refused and eventually was released.
Elena Urlaeva, head of the Uzbek Human Rights Defenders’ Alliance, another labor rights activist, has been arrested, interrogated and beaten several times this year.
Each harvest season, the Uzbek government mobilizes more than 1 million residents to pick cotton through systematic coercion. From September through October, many classrooms close because teachers are among those forced to pick cotton. Health clinics and hospitals are unable to function fully as their health workers are toiling in the fields.
This year, the government of Uzbekistan is expected to make $1 billion in profit from cotton sales, money that disappears into an extra-budgetary fund in the Finance Ministry to which only the highest-level officials have access, according to the Uzbek-German Forum report
The World Bank has pledged more than $450 million to Uzbekistan, mostly for modernization of agriculture, and has committed to pull out the loans if forced labor is used in project areas. But despite widespread detailed reports of ongoing forced labor in this year’s cotton harvest, the World Bank has not withdrawn its extensive funding.
In July, the U.S. State Department boosted the ranking of Uzbekistan in its Trafficking in Persons report, moving it up to the “Tier 2 Watchlist” from its previous “Tier 3” ranking. According to the State Department, Uzbekistan does not fully comply with the U.S. Trafficking Victims and Protection Act (TVPA) but is making significant efforts to become compliant. In its 2014 report, the State Department ranked Uzbekistan as “Tier 3,” the lowest designation that means it does not fully comply with minimum TVPA standards.
Earlier this year, the Solidarity Center was among 30 global unions, business associations and nonprofit networks urging the U.S. State Department to ensure its Trafficking in Persons report accurately reflect the serious, ongoing and government-sponsored forced labor in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.