Jun 14, 2013
Workers this week are marking the second anniversary of the historic passage of a global standard covering the rights of domestic workers. The International Labor Organization (ILO) “Decent Work for Domestic Workers Convention (No. 189) covers written employment contracts, protection from harassment, abuse and violence, hours of work, job safety and other workplace safeguards.
As in many countries around the world, domestic workers and their supporters in the Dominican Republic are campaigning for ratification of Convention 189. When a country signs the convention, it agrees to abide by its rules. Seven nations have ratified it in the past two years, a number that illustrates the challenges domestic workers face in achieving their rights on the job. In the Dominican Republic, domestic workers’ struggle for recognition of their rights on the job has involved decades of hard work, strategic coalition building, broad public outreach and much perseverance.
In 1989, the Asociaciün de Trabajadores (Domestic Workers Association, ATH), a non-governmental organization, sought to modify the nation’s employment law to include domestic workers. Early on in that campaign, ATH reached out to numerous women’s rights group for support and built a strong coalition which engaged in widespread media outreach—through posters, leaflets, seminars, workshops and press coverage. The campaign enlisted the backing of popular television personalities who served as well-known proponents appreciated by Dominican decision-makers and the populace.
Passage of the law in 1992 culminated “an arduous struggle” to convince members of Congress “that domestic workers were a fundamental part of society,” says Elena Andrea Pérez García, ATH organizational secretary. ATH, which now represents more than 3,500 members, affiliated in 2010 with the Confederaciün Nacional de Unidad Sindical (National Confederation of Labor Union Unity, CNUS).
One of the main roadblocks for domestic workers in the Dominican Republic, as elsewhere around the world, is overcoming the perception that because their labor takes place within a home, it is not “real” work. Some 90 percent of the 300,000 domestic workers in the Dominican Republic are women, and female immigrants, primarily from Haiti, comprise between 10 percent and 33 percent of domestic workers.
“In remunerated domestic work, which is performed mainly by women, social subordination and machista cultural stereotypes play a major role, as does the social devaluation of domestic work,” says Max Puig, who served as Dominican Republic Minister of Labor from 2008 to 2011.
In 2011, CNUS and a coalition of other unions and organizations helped move a bill to Congress that would provide domestic workers with social security coverage. Eulogia Familia, vice president of the 500,000-member CNUS, said getting the bill introduced involved “one-on-one interviews with key legislators to raise awareness” and meetings with government agencies responsible for shaping the legislation. Domestic workers’ participation was fundamental to these meetings, enabling legislators and policy-makers tolearn firsthand about the often daunting working conditions the women face. Further, says Familia, domestic workers could convince legislators “that they and their families are an important social group and that their vote will help elect” them. Following this outreach, the National Social Security Council issued a resolution to conduct studies on the best way to incorporate domestic workers into the social security system.
Domestic workers, energized by passage of Convention 189, are pushing hard for its ratification in the Dominican Republic—and are well positioned to do so. They are the women who leafleted, held meetings and reached out to the public for years in multiple campaigns, becoming empowered in the process.
Isolated behind the closed doors of private households, domestic workers are difficult to locate and gather in networks where they could learn their rights as working people, share experiences and gain confidence in their ability to improve workplace conditions. Outreach to this overlooked workforce by ATH and CNUS and their partners changed all that.
This report is an excerpt from the report, Dominican Republic: Domestic Workers Struggle for Rights. The report is part of Catalyst for Change, a Solidarity Center series supported by the National Endowment for Democracy. The series features the working people, their unions and activists who are advancing worker rights and greater equity in their societies. Their experience and efforts provide real, transferable lessons for others seeking to affect positive change.
Jun 12, 2013
The persistence of child labor—more than 215 million children toil worldwide, some half of whom are exposed to hazardous environments and suffer forced labor and prostitution—is a global shame, one highlighted each June 12 on World Day Against Child Labor.
Further, an estimated 10.5 million children worldwide labor as domestic workers in people’s homes, in hazardous and sometimes slavery-like conditions, according to a study released this morning. The International Labor Organization (ILO) report says the majority—some 6.5 million child domestic laborers—are between 5 and 14 years old. More than 71 percent are girls.
Child labor persists on a massive scale even though many nations, including Pakistan, have ratified the ILO standard on the worst forms of child labor. In fact, the U.S. Labor Department’s “2011 Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor” show Pakistan as one of the 27 countries (out of 144 countries assessed) that did not advance efforts to remove the worst forms of child labor.
Pakistan has no minimum age for employment, and the number of working children is estimated to range between 2 million and 19 million. In addition, Pakistan’s minimum age for hazardous work is 14, four years below the international standard age of 18. In 2011, Pakistan had the world’s second highest number of out-of-school children between ages 5 and 9.
Many children in Pakistan work as bonded laborers in dangerous brick kilns, shaping bricks from wet clay, facing the searing heat from a kiln’s open fire and carrying stacks of finished bricks on their heads. In Pakistan and in other South Asian nations, entire families sometimes become bonded after borrowing money from someone like a brick kiln owner. They then work to repay the loan but often are unable to pay off their debt, even over many years, because their wages are so low. The children and adult workers often cannot leave the kiln because they are indebted to the owners, and sometimes are even re-sold.
Pakistan passed laws covering bonded labor and now requires brick kilns to register with the government as formal employers, which would allow workers to access retirement and other benefits. But neither law is enforced.
To address the dire conditions of Pakistan’s brick kiln industry, the Solidarity Center is partnering with two established and respected Pakistani organizations to develop and implement a pilot program to promote decent work. The Solidarity Center and its long-time partner, the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child, along with the Center for Labour Advocacy and Dialogue, believe an effective solution must consider the needs of all stakeholders, including workers and their families, brick kiln owners and international donors.
Ultimately, says Tim Ryan, Solidarity Center Asia Regional Director, “The goal is to eliminate the brick kiln industry’s reliance on child labor and debt bondage, end hazardous working conditions and open up educational opportunities for children.” The Solidarity Center will report on this long-term project in coming months.
Jun 3, 2013
Emerging nations—where, on average, employment is rising, income inequality decreasing and the middle class rapidly expanding—are recovering from the global recession faster than developed countries, according to an International Labor Organization (ILO) report released today.
Based on current trends, the “World of Work Report: 2013” forecasts that employment rates across emerging and developing economies will return to pre-recession levels in 2015, while employment rates in advanced economies will only return to pre-crisis status after 2017.
Yet the report also finds that more than 30 million jobs are needed to return employment to the pre-recession level and predicts that nearly 208 million women and men will be unemployed in 2015, rising to 214 million people by 2018. Today, slightly more than the 200 million people are jobless. “Almost everywhere, young people and women find it difficult to obtain jobs that match their skills and aspirations,” according to the report, which is subtitled, “Repairing the Economic and Social Fabric.”
“We need a global recovery focused on jobs and productive investment, combined with better social protection for the poorest and most vulnerable groups. And we need to pay serious attention to closing the inequality gap that is widening in so many parts of the world,” said ILO Director-General Guy Ryder.
Behind the overall national averages, the report paints a less optimistic picture for millions of workers in emerging and developing nations.
• Employment rates in 2012 surpassed pre-crisis rates in 13 of 28 countries with available information. Of the 28, only four developing economies (Jamaica, Jordan, Morocco and Sri Lanka) showed a continuous decline in employment rates at the start of the crisis. In the 11 remaining countries, the employment rates have showed some recovery, but the increase was not sufficient to surpass pre-crisis levels.
• Although the size of the middle-income group has increased, there are three times as many workers on the brink of poverty, whose numbers rose from 1.1 million in 1999 to 1.9 million in 2010, mostly in low- and low middle-income economies.
• Even though global investment by emerging economies increased, accounting for nearly 47 percent of global investment in 2012 compared with only 27 percent in 2000, investment in this group has been stagnant when India and Indonesia are excluded.
Global investment is essential to improving employment, according to the report. Further, it finds that higher minimum wage levels and/or improved compliance in following minimum-wage laws have tended to boost the relative position of low-paid workers. Minimum wages have been accompanied by reductions in inequality at the bottom end of economic distribution, especially in India, Mali, the Philippines, South Africa, Turkey and Vietnam, the report finds. In Brazil and Peru, improved minimum wages appear to have resulted in an expansion of the middle part of the wage distribution.
The report highlights case studies of successful economic initiatives, including those launched by the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), a Solidarity Center partner. The group has addressed the welfare of women working in India’s informal sector by establishing programs to foster health care, income security and empowerment. The organization provides members with health education and preventative health care, such child immunization.
May 30, 2013
The freedom to form factory-level unions and negotiate job safety, living wages and fundamental social protections is key to any reform of Bangladesh’s labor laws, leaders and members of Bangladesh unions and worker organizations told U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.). Over the weekend, Miller held two meetings at the Solidarity Center’s Bangladesh office with garment union leaders and more than two dozen workers from newly formed and registered unions at 20 garment factories.
“I come here to hear your stories,” Miller said as he opened one meeting, to heartfelt greetings. He assured participants he would bring their stories to his colleagues in the U.S. Congress and continue to support the struggle of Bangladeshi workers. When he asked for specific issues he should discuss with the Bangladesh government, the group suggested trade union rights, fire and building safety, and wages.
One factory union leader described how employer opposition made it extremely hard for workers at her garment factory to form a union—but how the work environment immediately improved after they succeeded in forming one.
“It was difficult to get our union,” said Maksuda, general secretary of the Sadia Garments Workers Union at Sadia Garments. (Like many in Bangladesh, Maksuda uses only one name.) “Workers were getting fired, thugs were in front of the factory gates harassing us and it was very discouraging. But we continued, and now we have our union registration. I am amazed that immediately we were able to hold a dialogue with management and were treated with respect right away. I am looking forward to changes that we can achieve with our union.”
Alamgir, a union president at a different factory, said benefit cuts and delays in receiving overtime pay pushed workers to form a union. Management fought their efforts. But once the union had its registration, the company engaged in talks with workers, returned benefits and gave workers a small, incremental wage increase.
Miller also met with leaders from Solidarity Center partners, including the Bangladesh Independent Garment Union Federation (BIGUF), the Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation (BGIWF), the Bangladesh Federation for Workers Solidarity (BFWS) and the National Garment Workers Federation (NGWF).
BIGUF Joint Secretary Rashedul Alom Raju said that while the government of Bangladesh has announced it would raise the minimum wage for the nation’s 4 million garment workers and make forming a union easier, “it is too early to tell how serious the government is” regarding other amendments to the labor code, which may or may not benefit workers.
The government announcement came after at least 1,127 garment workers were killed when the Rana Plaza building collapsed in late April just five months after a deadly fire at another factory. In recent months, the government has registered 27 factory-level unions and called for the formation of a minimum wage board.
May 28, 2013
Recognizing that “the challenges confronting the working men and women in Pakistan cannot be effectively” addressed without a strong and united workers’ voice, the Pakistan Workers Federation and eight other union federations are seeking to unify their organizations.
Leaders from the federations, which include the Muttahida Labor Federation (MLF) and the All Pakistan Trade Union Congress (APTUC), met this month in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, to discuss unification. They unanimously passed the resolution “Towards Unity of Labor Movement in Pakistan” and pledged to strengthen unity and work collectively by bringing workers from all industries together in a common platform.
The executive boards of each federation must approve the resolution. M. Zahoor Awan, general secretary of the Pakistan Workers Federation, was appointed to act as the coordinator for the unity process.
Read the full resolution.
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