Since the start of 2019, more than 2,000 migrant workers from Kyrgyzstan have joined together to protect their rights abroad through the new Migrant Workers’ Union. On October 17, more than 100 union delegates came together in the town of Isfana, Kyrgyzstan, for the union’s founding congress.
Newly elected deputy chairwoman of the Migrant Workers’ Union, Batyrova Kanykey, addresses more than 100 delegates at their founding congress. Credit: Elena Rubtsova
The congress marks a crucial step as the union establishes itself as a leading support system for migrant workers from Kyrgyzstan. Delegates cast their votes to elect union leadership and planned activities and outreach to more workers in the coming year.
Workers from across three regions of western Kyrgyzstan—Batken, Jalal-Abad and Osh—worked together to build this new organization, with support from the Solidarity Center and Insan-Leilek, a local foundation that provided assistance to migrant workers from Kyrgyzstan over the last five years. The union has also garnered support from the Germany-based Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and Caritas France.
Insan-Leilek celebrated the milestone with a video in Russian.
Protecting Workers Abroad
Migrant workers from Kyrgyzstan, and from around the world, often face discrimination, exploitation and unsafe working conditions when they arrive in their destination countries. In Russia, a common destination for Kyrgyz migrants, workers have reported working without official contracts or having their wages stolen, with few opportunities to stand up for their rights and hold their employers accountable. Kyrgyz workers also travel to Kazakhstan, Germany and elsewhere for work. Many stay year-round, while others travel back and forth each year for seasonal jobs.
“A large number of labor migrants are subjected to exploitation and violation of their rights by employers, employment agencies and other intermediaries,” says Gulnara Derbisheva, a human rights activist in Kyrgyzstan and the leader of Insan-Leilek. “They face abuse of authority by the police and other officials. In some cases, labor migrants are victims of trafficking and forced labor.”
Since 2015, the Solidarity Center and Insan-Leilek have held pre-departure trainings for working women and men who are preparing to migrate abroad, most of them to Russia. Through these trainings, thousands of migrants have learned about their rights and the protections they have under Russian labor law. Armed with this knowledge, many workers have started exercising their rights the moment they arrive at their new jobs.
Many migrants have used their knowledge of Russian labor law to negotiate higher wages and overtime pay. Others have worked with their employers to ensure they have fully signed contracts that specify their working conditions and document their ability to work in the country. Migrant women have also learned how to protect their rights, including avoiding human traffickers and reporting workplace harassment.
The Solidarity Center also provides training participants with contact information for local legal support in their destination countries. Through hotlines and free consultations, workers can seek legal help if or when they encounter issues on the job, such as wage theft and harassment.
The Solidarity Center’s pre-departure trainings have also shown migrants how they can join trade unions to further protect their rights, even when they are working abroad. As a result, workers decided they should create their own union so they could tailor it to support Kyrgyz migrants.
Migrant Workers Organizing for Justice
The creation of the Migrant Workers’ Union, its members say, is not just timely but also necessary to protect their rights at a time when more than one-fifth of Kyrgyz citizens are living and working abroad.
Gulzat, a delegate at the congress from the village of Boz-Adyr in the Batken region, first heard about the union at a training session the Solidarity Center and Insan-Leilek held in her village earlier in 2019. “I learned many important things about my labor rights and how they could be protected,” she says. “It was then that I decided to join the Migrant Workers’ Union because I am going back to work in Russia.”
Gulzat first went to work in Russia in 2010, where she experienced wage theft firsthand. “I became a dishwasher in a Moscow cafe and was a victim of fraud when I was left without a salary,” she explains. “I didn’t know where to turn for help, but now I know.”
The Migrant Workers’ Union currently has 2,150 members. But the union’s protections extend beyond just its members. Migrant workers from Kyrgyzstan rely on decent wages not only for themselves but also to support their families back home. Migrant workers from Kyrgyzstan remitted an estimated $2.48 billion in 2018, about 34 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. Since 2017, Kyrgyzstan has been the most remittance-dependent country in the world, and remittances are particularly important in its western regions like Batken. As migrant workers learn to defend their rights abroad, they also ensure their families in Kyrgyzstan can have more economic security and access more opportunities at home.
“Everybody needs their union,” says Gulzat. “Especially migrants.”
Jaime Atilio Rodríguez, a union leader and human rights activist in Honduras, was found alive yesterday after being kidnapped and apparently tortured.
Rodríguez, former president of the Union of Middle School Teachers (COPEMH), disappeared October 28 on the way to the bus in Tegucigalpa’s historic center, according to the Committee of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees in Honduras (COFADEH).
He was rescued after being bound and dumped near the Choluteca River, his neck slashed. He was treated and released yesterday from the hospital.
“They cut his throat, kidnapped him and threw him into the river,” said Rodriguez’ wife Martha de Rodríguez, who spoke with COFADEH.
According to the Network Against Anti-Union Violence in Honduras, which tracks attacks on worker rights defenders, including union members and leaders, Rodríguez could have been targeted because of his activism as a land rights defender, his stance against electoral fraud, his recent opposition to proposed government privatization of essential public services, or some combination of the three. Tens of thousands of people have taken part in protests since April, when the government announced deep cuts to education and health services.
Spending on education and culture has dropped from 33 percent of the national budget to 20 percent over the past decade, with wages and infrastructure spending frozen. Some 40 percent of emergency rooms have inadequate medical coverage, according to the Honduras National Commission for Human Rights. Educators and health care workers say privatizing health and education systems will further decrease services and lead to layoffs.
The assault on Rodríguez also was meant to send a signal to others engaged in social protests, according to the Network, which says members of some of the country’s teacher unions have been harassed and intimidated for their involvement in the protests, with the president of another teacher union repeatedly threatened and nearly kidnapped. The Network is a Solidarity Center partner.
The teacher unions are members of the Platform for the Defense of Health and Public Education, a coalition of union and community organizations, which led the protests this past spring against cuts to public services. Security forces repeatedly responded by firing at protesters with live ammunition and tear gas.
Teachers demanded Rodríguez’s safe return in protest downtown. Credit: Network Against Anti-Union Violence
Immediately following his disappearance, Rodríguez’s colleagues at COFADEH protested in downtown Tegucigalpa with signs demanding his safe return.
Edwin Hernández, a leader of a teachers union (Colpedagogosh), also active in the Platform for the Defense of Health and Public Education, took part in protest by teacher union activists demanding Jaime’s return.
“We are here demonstrating before our society so that society realizes what is happening to our friend Jaime, who is so valuable to the popular struggles in our country,” he said.
From his hospital bed, his throat visibly cut, Rodríguez agreed with a colleague who told him, “We won’t step back,” adding, “Onward!”
In 2012, the AFL-CIO and 26 Honduran unions and civil society organizations filed a complaint under the labor chapter of Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). The complaint, filed with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Trade and Labor Affairs, alleges the Honduran government failed to enforce worker rights under its labor laws. In an October 2018 report, the U.S. Trade and Labor Affairs office said Honduras had made no progress on any of the emblematic cases since 2012.
In a recent letter to the U.S. Labor Department and U.S. Trade Representative, several members of Congress expressed “deep concern” regarding Honduras’s “continued violation” of CAFTA’s labor chapter, and noted that despite some progress, Honduras “continues to commit serious violations of the labor chapter on a regular basis.”
More than 100 worker rights lawyers from around the world will identify common challenges, share successes and plan strategic partnerships next week in Mexico City at the first International Lawyer Action Network (ILAW) conference.
“The ILAW Network’s inaugural conference in Mexico City aims to bring together lawyers from around the world to construct bottom-up strategies to promote and defend the rights of workers, associations and unions,” says Jeff Vogt, Solidarity Center Rule of Law director and ILAW board chair. “With workers facing constant attacks worldwide, it is more critical than ever that their advocates provide the best support possible.”
The Solidarity Center launched ILAW in December 2018 as a global hub for worker rights lawyers to facilitate innovative litigation, help spread the adoption of pro-worker legislation and defeat anti-worker laws. Since then, more than 350 hundred individuals and organizations from more than 50 countries have joined, most recently from the Nigerian Labor Congress.
“ILAW is needed now more than ever to effectively represent workers across borders,” says Ruwan Subasinghe, International Transport Workers’ Federation legal adviser and founding member of the ILAW Advisory Board, which includes 20 lawyers from 20 countries with expertise on a broad range of legal matters.
“This conference gives progressive worker rights lawyers a much-needed opportunity to learn from each other, build networks and strengthen cooperation.”
Globalizing Strategies to Protect Worker Rights
Participants from dozens of countries at the November 4–5 conference will discuss corporate accountability in supply chains, migrant and informal worker rights, the employment relationship, employment discrimination in all its forms, and workers’ right to exercise freedom of association.
In sharing success stories, legal advocates, who have been instrumental in ensuring workers achieve justice, seek to take their victories globally.
In 2018, for instance, worker rights lawyers won a key victory in Thailand, where a court dismissed criminal defamation charges against 14 migrant workers from Myanmar who faced jail time after reporting abusive working conditions on a poultry farm. The workers left the farm in 2016 and filed a complaint with the National Human Rights Commission of Thailand describing forced overtime, unlawful salary deductions, passport confiscation and restrictions on movement.
“I see the ILAW network as a basis of strategic development of lawyers practicing labor law worldwide, as a source of sharing best practices and the opportunity to bring each other’s knowledge home to our countries to determine its best implementation,” says Raisa Liparteliani, vice president of the Georgian Trade Union Confederation (GTUC) and founding ILAW Board member.
The conference will enable participants “to share best practices and challenges of lawyers from different countries and build the common strategy for worker rights protection, covering not only litigation but advocacy campaigns, law making process, awareness raising and more,” she says.
Follow Solidarity Center on Twitter and Facebook for updates throughout the conference.
The freedom to speak, join unions and take part in community life are basic human rights that apply to all people—including migrant workers and refugees, panelists at a United Nations side event said this afternoon in New York City.
“Migrant workers and refugees don’t usually have access to justice, and so the lack of enjoyment of these rights has more of a negative impact on them than on the general population,” said Felipe Gonzalez Morales, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants.
Gonzalez and other panelists took part in the event to launch a new report, Freedoms on the Move: The Civic Space of Migrant Workers and Refugees, by the Solidarity Center and CIVICUS. The report’s findings make clear that many migrant workers and refugees want to access their civic freedoms and do not want to remain on the margins. They want to have a say in their communities and their workplaces, and in the decisions that affect their lives.
(The report also is available in Spanish and French).
Through in depth surveys, Freedoms on the Move highlights the experiences of 1,000 migrant workers and refugees in Germany, Kenya, Jordan, Malaysia and Mexico who discuss the barriers to freedom of association, assembly and expression, and the factors enabling them to exercise those rights.
“Legislation in countries deny migrant workers the right to have access to freedom of association,” said Griet Cattaert, policy officer at the International Labor Organization. And because migrant workers often work in the informal economy, sometimes in “hidden work” like domestic workers in private homes, “it is much more difficult to organize themselves in unions,” she said.
“Migrant worker rights are not just good for them but their communities.”—Neha Misra Credit: Solidarity Center/Tula Connell
The global assaults on democracy and fundamental rights is an urgent call to action for unions and other civil society groups to include migrant workers and refugees in advancing these rights, panelists said.
In the report, CIVICUS and the Solidarity Center urge all states to create and maintain, in law and in practice, an enabling environment for the rights of migrant workers and refugees, in accordance with international laws and standards.
“Democratic society cannot thrive when entire populations of people excluded,” said Neha Misra, Solidarity Center senior specialist for migration and trafficking. “Migrant workers we talked to rightfully insisted their destination countries have much to gain from their presence. Migrant worker rights are not just good for them but their communities.”
“Freedom of association and expression are important for migrant workers because they are human rights,” said Crispin Hernandez, a migrant agricultural worker who helped his co-workers organize with the Workers’ Center of Central New York.
“It doesn’t matter where we come from, or our country of origin, or our gender. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what kind of work you do. It doesn’t matter what I do for a living. I am entitled to my rights. We are humans.”
Freedom to Form Unions Key to Migrant Worker Rights
More than 258 million migrants, 164 million of whom are migrant workers, live outside their origin countries as global inequality and the search for decent work push workers to migrate far from their homes, and as war and economic crises force millions across borders.
Monami Maulik, international coordinator at the Global Coalition on Migration, discussed how the report builds on the recently negotiated Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, the first-ever UN global agreement on a common approach to international migration in all its dimensions.
“Fundamental to success of the Global Compact on Migration is the participation and engagement of migrant workers with unions and civil society, and so the success of implementing rights’ protections for migrant workers means we first must look at what’s happening to their freedom to organize,” she said.
Freedoms on the Move finds that “migrant workers and refugees must have the opportunity to come together, advocate for their well being without fear of reprisal and hold states accountable for delivering on their obligations under international laws,” Misra said.
Employer Harassment Major Barrier to Forming Unions
Griet Cattaert and Crispin Hernandez discussed why human rights laws apply to migrant workers .Credit: Solidarity Center/Tula Connell
The report found that harassment or pressure from employers is the main obstacle for migrant workers seeking to form unions or otherwise exercise their freedom of association: 78 percent of respondents in Jordan, 66 percent in Kenya, 74 percent in Malaysia and 33 percent in Mexico.
More key findings from the report include:
Migrant workers believe the main limitation on their freedom of expression is the possibility of being fired from work, detained or deported, with wide variations by gender: 47 percent of women and 72 percent of men in Jordan; 62 percent and 71 percent respectively in Kenya; 50 percent and 41 percent in Malaysia, and 80 percent and 45 percent in Mexico.
Rates of participation in protests vary widely, from only 11 percent in Jordan and Mexico to 58 percent in Germany.
Refugees say a lack of resources is the major limitation that prevents people from associating and organizing.
Join Solidarity Center and CIVICUS Friday, October 18, at 3 p.m. EST for the launch of a new report, Freedoms on the Move: The Civic Space of Migrant Workers and Refugees, by CIVICUS and the Solidarity Center. Participants at the event will share findings and recommendations on civic space barriers for migrants and refugees.
United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants Felipe Gonzalez Morales will join other civil society activists to discuss how they are advancing freedom of association, expression and assembly for migrant workers and refugees. Panelists also include:
Griet Cattaert, International Labor Organization
Crispin Hernandez, Workers’ Center of Central New York
Neha Misra, Solidarity Center
Monami Maulik at the Global Coalition on Migration will moderate.
As globalization and the search for decent work push workers to migrate far from their homes, and as war and economic crises force millions across borders, there is limited data on whether and how migrant workers and refugees are able to exercise their fundamental civic freedoms.
Through two in depth surveys, one of migrant workers and another of refugees, Freedoms on the Move also explores the factors that make migrant workers and refugees more likely to try to assert their rights, the circumstances that make them more vulnerable to violations and abuses, and the perpetrators and enablers of denials of their rights.
Freedoms on the Move is an urgent call to action for unions and civil society advocating for civic freedoms in their countries. As the report states:
“International human rights law does not limit civil and political rights to citizens. Like everyone else, migrant workers and refuges should be able to enjoy the key civic freedoms of association, peaceful assembly and expression. For migrant workers and refugees, these freedoms offer protection against discrimination, marginalization and scapegoating, which commonly affect them in their host or destination countries. When the rights to association, peaceful assembly and expression are open to migrant workers and refugees, they can organize and act to uphold their interests in their workplaces and communities, influence public opinion and hold public officials accountable.”
Stop back to access the full report on October 10, and follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more updates!
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According to the Network Against Anti-Union Violence in Honduras, which tracks attacks on worker rights defenders, including union members and leaders, Rodríguez could have been targeted because of his activism as a land rights defender, his stance against electoral fraud, his recent opposition to proposed government privatization of essential public services, or some combination of the three. Tens of thousands of people 
