South Africa

  In South Africa, the Solidarity Center aims to improve the lives of working people, particularly the most vulnerable—farm workers, domestic workers, migrant workers and women workers—who face long-standing barriers to sharing the country’s economic prosperity. The Solidarity Center works closely with the 2 million-member Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the Federation of South Africa Trade Unions (FEDUSA). With its union and worker organization partners, the Solidarity Center conducts gender equality training to help counter gender-based violence and harassment at work and enable workers, especially women workers, achieve their rights to maternity protection and workplaces free of sexual harassment and other forms of gender-based violence. To help build stronger legal and social representation for the more than 1 million domestic workers in South Africa, the Solidarity Center works with the South African Domestic Service and Allied Workers Union (SADSAWU). The Solidarity Center helps SADSAWU improve its organizing outreach and holds exchanges between SADSAWU and U.S. domestic workers’ organizations. Working with the Food and Allied Workers Union (FAWU), the Solidarity Center bolsters the union’s efforts to represent and assist migrant farm workers, whose jobs involve long hours, low pay and little room to assert their workplace rights.