Jan 29, 2013
Millions of people around the world labor in the informal economy as taxi drivers, fruit sellers and in other jobs partially or fully outside government regulation and taxation. In Kenya, where the informal sector accounts for 80 percent of employment and contributes 25 percent to the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP), union outreach is helping give these workers a voice on the job.
“The informal sector is the only place where overall poverty can be alleviated,” says Albert Njeru, secretary general of the Kenya Union of Domestic, Hotel, Educational Institutions, Hospitals and Allied Workers (KUDHEIHA).
“Financial gain for workers benefits communities, can send children to school, provide water,” he said.
On a recent visit to Washington, D.C., and other U.S. cities, Njeru shared his union’s accomplishments in organizing domestic workers and others whose work is typically isolated, unpredictable and lacking in legal protections. Njeru says when he was elected president in 2007, seven domestic workers were members of KUDHEIHA. Today, that number is 22,000. Overall, the percentage of KUDHEIHA members in the informal sector has increased from 5 percent to 30 percent in that same time, Njeru says.
Globally, between 23 percent and 35 percent of all economic activity occurs in the informal economy. For the poorest countries, the percentage is even higher—estimates range between 29 and 57 percent. But the nature of their work makes them difficult to reach—and requires strong commitment from union leadership to succeed.
In Kenya, that process begins one worker at a time. KUDHEIHA organizers meet with kiosk sellers, cart drivers and others one by one. Later, groups of these workers come together, typically on a Sunday, to take part in meetings where the union provides education about their rights as employees. For instance, informal sector workers may not know they now are entitled to a pension, following a 2009 law requiring employers to make monthly contributions for such coverage, even if they only employ one person.
In addition to the difficulty involved in organizing informal-sector workers, another challenge is improving their working conditions. Because collective bargaining is not possible for individually employed workers, the union organizes them into cooperatives, whose leadership in turn educates local employers in how to treat workers fairly.
“Whichever sector you’re coming from, your basic right must be protected, your basic right must be respected,” says Njeru. “The issue of discrimination, the issue of abuse, the issue of not being paid, the issue of workers not being able to move freely, of slavery…they deserve decent work, they deserve dignity, they deserve respect.” All of KUDHEIHA’s 24 branch affiliates dedicate a staff member to each segment of its membership, for instance, domestic workers. This structure ensures membership growth and support within that industry.
At the national level, KUDHEIHA presses the government for increases in health and retirement coverage and is pushing for Kenya to pass the International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 189, Decent Work for Domestic Workers. Njeru is confident passage will happen soon.
The deepening processes of informalization and casualization of work that are changing livelihood opportunities and conditions in Africa and beyond require a strategic—and sustained—response from unions to ensure this rapidly growing workforce has the tools and support needed to attain safe workplaces with decent wages. When workers are empowered, they strengthen the nation, says Njeru.
“Workers are the people who can be able to decide the destiny of our country through their labor.”
Interview by the Solidarity Center.
Jan 28, 2013
Seven young women, at least two of them teenagers, died over the weekend in a Bangladesh garment factory fire—the 28th fire incident to frighten, injure or kill Bangladeshi garment workers since a deadly blaze at the Tazreen factory killed at least 112 workers in late November, according to Solidarity Center staff in Bangladesh. At least 491 garment workers have been injured on the job since the Tazreen blaze, according to information compiled by the Solidarity Center.
“Nearly two months to the day we see another preventable tragedy fueled by the relentless drive for cheap production that often entails dangerous facilities, below-poverty wages, cramped conditions and an absence of health and safety programs,” says Solidarity Center Asia Regional Program Director Tim Ryan. “We want to express our deepest sympathy to the families and loved ones of those killed in the blaze.”
According to news reports, the 300 workers at the Smart Export Garments factory faced unsafe conditions similar to those found at Tazreen: locked doors and gates that prevented them from quickly escaping the blaze, a lack of fire extinguishers and piles of flammable material that were not stored in fireproofed areas. Some workers jumped out of windows to escape, and it took nine fire engines around two hours to stop the fire at the two-story factory building. Bangladeshi authorities have confirmed that the building was illegally constructed and lacked proper fire-safety measures.
Bangladesh is the second largest exporter of ready-made garments after China, and clothes account for up to 80 percent of the country’s $24 billion annual exports. Yet the base pay for a garment worker in Bangladesh is the equivalent of $37 a month—below the international poverty line of $1.25 per day.
Over the weekend in the Bangladesh capital, Dhaka, representatives of labor and civil society organizations gathered to discuss worker safety in the nation’s ready-made garment industry. Many participants said the ability of workers to freely form unions and get a voice on the job is essential to establishing safe working conditions.
“There is no alternative to [a] trade union for protecting the basic rights of the workers,” said Dr. Debapriya Bhattacharya, speaking at the Center for Policy Dialogue (CPD) conference where he is a distinguished fellow.
Yet workers who try to form unions often face abuse and even death, says Ryan. “Over the past three years, hundreds of garment workers have been injured, and some killed, in clashes with police while demonstrating or on strike for worker rights, most often for higher wages.” Last April, Aminul Islam, an organizer for the Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation (BGIWF), a Solidarity Center partner, was murdered, his body bearing signs of torture.
“Too often in low-wage economies, companies find little reason to protect the rights and interests of workers—and corporate self-regulation has proven a faulty tool for ensuring healthy and dignified workplaces,” said Ryan. “Meanwhile, vulnerable and impoverished workers cannot fight alone for their rights and, without the relative strength of a union to represent them, their lives hang in the balance.”
The Solidarity Center has been supporting workers’ rights—including providing fire safety training—in Bangladesh for decades.
Jan 24, 2013
Among the thousands of Cambodian garment workers who have fainted on the job over the past few years, many suffer from malnutrition, anemia and dehydration. Low wages and a relative monopoly on food canteens surrounding factories leave workers with few options for healthy food. In recent months, however, Cambodia’s garment manufacturers and unions have begun working together to urge clothing and apparel brand makers to fund one free meal for workers each day. The Solidarity Center played a key role in facilitating the agreement between the two groups.
The cost to corporations would be minimal, yet would be a big boost for garment workers, who now spend 60 percent of their salary on food, says David Welsh, the Solidarity Center’s Cambodia program director.
At a brown bag lunch at the Solidarity Center in Washington, D.C., last week, Welsh provided an update on the Solidarity Center’s work in Cambodia, where the garment industry represents 90 percent of the country’s exports and employs an estimated 357,000 workers, most of whom are women.
Garment workers received a 25 percent wage increase in the past year, says Welsh, but it has been eroded by a commensurate hike in food costs, which are high at the factory-owned cafeterias. In addition, the workers are under pressure to send much of their earnings back to their families at home. Poor nutrition is one of many factors behind the fainting incidents in Cambodia’s garment factories, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO). “Contributing factors include poor worker nutrition, excessive overtime, high heat levels, poor ventilation and mass psychogenic illness (MPI),” according to the ILO’s Better Factories-Cambodia report. Workers in factories where mass faintings have occurred say they work between 12 and 14 hours a day while being exposed to strong chemicals in hot and poorly ventilated environments. Most of the female workers said they also travel long hours standing in overcrowded trucks to get to work each day.
In addition to working to improve conditions in Cambodia’s garment factories, the Solidarity Center has been instrumental in helping local unions reshape Cambodia’s proposed trade union law. As originally drafted, the proposed law was in clear violation of every major agreement ratified by the ILO, says Welsh. The trade union law now being considered adheres closely to international labor standards and would include informal sector workers, a group not currently covered by the nation’s labor law. More than 80 percent of Cambodia’s population is younger than age 30, and 70 percent of young workers are in informal sector jobs (including irregular and non-wage jobs such as street vendors).
Welsh also reported that large-scale union organizing is taking place in industries such as construction, where workers at Cambodia’s biggest building materials factory recently formed a union. More than 100 workers restoring the nation’s historic tourist destination, Angkor Wat, also recently joined the BWTUC (Building and Construction Workers Trade Union Confederation), which is affiliated with the independent Cambodian Labor Confederation.
Jan 11, 2013
January 11, 2013—Three years after the disastrous earthquake struck Haiti, workers and their families continue to struggle as the cost-of-living keeps rising while wages—for those who have jobs—remain the same. Informal discussions by Solidarity Center staff with Haitian export-processing workers this month indicate that in the past year, the cost of food and education has increased between 20 percent and 25 percent, while rent and transportation have risen between 15 percent and 20 percent.
Post-earthquake unemployment and inflation compounded pre-existing financial difficulties for many families. Even before the earthquake, workers (who on average earn between $3 and $5 a day), struggled to afford food, shelter and school fees for their children. The situation has not improved since the Solidarity Center published a cost-of-living study in March 2011. Now, Haitians also face widespread hunger as two recent storms created $170 million in crop losses.
The Solidarity Center has joined with Haitian unions and worker rights organizations in calling for decent employment, living wages, safe working conditions and the right to form unions without retaliation so that Haitian workers can support their families and help their country recover from the quake and a series of other crises that followed.
The Solidarity Center initiated a new program that works toward these goals, with a specific focus on organizing in the textile sector. The program aims to build the capacity of unions to protect vulnerable workers, participate in productive labor-management dialogue and advocate for public policies that improve the lives of working families. The Solidarity Center—which has been supporting programs in Haiti from its office in the Dominican Republic—opened an office in Port-au-Prince in 2012, hiring a full-time director to ensure that union partners receive the on-the-ground support they need.
Workers Helping Workers, from Disaster through Aftermath
The January 12, 2010, earthquake killed tens of thousands of people and left up to a million homeless. Following the disaster, a massive cholera outbreak struck hundreds of thousands of Haitians. In the earthquake’s immediate aftermath and in the years since, the Solidarity Center, together with Haitian unions, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and TransAfrica, provided assistance directly to Haitian workers and their families in need. U.S. union members and allies contributed to the Solidarity Center’s Earthquake Relief Fund and the Solidarity Center channeled and coordinated on-the-ground efforts with trade union partners and worked with them to jointly determine the areas of greatest need.
Within days of the earthquake, the Solidarity Center dispatched regular truckloads of emergency supplies to Haiti from its field office in neighboring Dominican Republic. The Solidarity Center also used disaster relief funds to:
• Support AFT in establishing a union-run health clinic in Port au Prince which has provided hundreds of patients with free pediatric, maternal and preventative care since it opened in August 2011.
• Provide educational stipends to more than 700 children, which allowed them to continue their studies in a safe, child-friendly environment.
• Assist the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) in training and deploying 50 Haitian trade unionists to the hardest hit areas of the country, where they delivered hygiene and sanitation kits and information on preventing and identifying the disease.
• Partnered with TransAfrica in the “Let Haiti Live” project, which empowers Haitian workers and their communities to advocate for improved living conditions.
Jan 10, 2013
Workers at AERODESPACHOS in El Salvador sought better job safety–and 96 were fired. Credit: CEAL
The promotional website for AERODESPACHOS in El Salvador features workers loading airplanes, transporting baggage and servicing engines. Yet while the airline ground services company wants to showcase its workforce, it is unwilling to provide safe working conditions and decent wages, its employees say. And when the ground servicing crew sought to address safety and health issues by forming a union, AERODESPACHOS fired 96 employees—nearly its entire staff—to reduce the number of workers seeking to join a union and so legally disqualify their efforts.
The Ministry of Labor has ordered their reinstatement and condemned what it has called “serious, anti-union acts.” The company has not complied.
Since May 2011, when the workers first formed a local union with SITIAPES (the Industrial Union of Aeronautical and Connected Industries Workers of El Salvador), the company has refused to negotiate a contract, petitioned the court to be exempt from unionization and ignored some government orders to address safety hazards.
AERODESPACHOS, which operates through a contract with a state enterprise (CEPA) to assist international flights from major airlines, also replaced some of the workers it hired through subcontractors.
According to the Center for Worker Education and Support (CEAL), a government inspection last year found inadequate and deplorable facilities, including dirty and deteriorating dormitories and break rooms, no fire extinguisher, no individual labor contracts and no posted work rules.
SITIAPES has called on the Ministry of Labor, the airport authority, and the government of El Salvador to force AERODESPACHOS to comply with the law—in particular to respect freedom of association and collective bargaining.
AERODESPACHOS’s contract with CEPA expires in March 2013, and SITIAPES is asking that CEPA not give the company another contract and that the 96 fire workers be rehired by the replacement contractor.
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