Asia
Solidarity Center, India, women In Asia, the Solidarity Center helps workers build strong unions to defend their fundamental rights at home and abroad, escape abuse and forced labor and hold governments accountable for their economic security. As the developing Asia-Pacific region (Central Asia, East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific) has modernized and transformed into a global manufacturing hub for multinational corporations, the Asian growth model has been promoted as a development paradigm for emerging economies. The region has seen soaring economic growth over the past 20 years, its gross domestic product (GDP) rising by 6.1 percent in 2013. The region also led the global recovery after the 2009 recession. Yet this model has created a system of vastly unequal outcomes. The workers who have fueled Asia’s extraordinary economic growth through their labor in factories and the informal economy have not shared in economic prosperity—specifically in the form of increased wages, better benefits or secure work. As a result, the Asian region has seen the world’s largest out-migration of workers, who are driven to leave their homes in desperation to support their families. Millions of workers from South and Southeast Asia travel to countries around the world, most to the Arabian Gulf, for jobs in fishing, construction and domestic service. Few migrant workers have rights on the job or in the countries where they work. As global consumer brands chase the lowest costs and highest profits around the globe, Southeast Asia has become a haven for export processing zones (EPZs). Millions of workers desperate for decent wages endure long workdays, forced unpaid overtime and sub-poverty wages. Garment workers, fish processors and others toiling in the EPZs for global manufacturing companies have few or no rights on the job and face daunting obstacles to forming unions. Factory-level union activists are fired and blacklisted, unable to find another job. Workers in Asia also often risk their lives in unsafe and unhealthy workplaces. Exposed to toxic chemicals or deadly asbestos, or toiling in dangerous garment factories or mines, more than 1.1 million people in Asia die each year from workplace hazards or accidents. Millions more workers are forced to make a living in the informal economy, where as street vendors, domestic workers and taxi drivers, they earn low wages in often unsafe conditions and have little or access to pensions or other social protections.

Media Contact

Kate Conradt
Communications Director
(+1) 202-974 -8369

 

Fighting With Fire: Bangladesh Garment Workers Take Safety into Their Own Hands

On April 24, 2013, the Rana Plaza garment factory building in Bangladesh collapsed, trapping thousands of workers and ultimately killing more than 1,130 garment workers in a preventable workplace disaster. The tragedy came five months after a fire tore through Tazreen...

3 Years after Rana Plaza, Little Change without a Union

In Dhaka, Bangladesh, the conditions Sharina describes at the garment factory where she works can be summed up in three words: dangerous, unsanitary and exploitative. Wages are delayed. Legally required maternity leave is denied. Workers are sometimes forced to toil...

Bangladesh: Garment Workers, Unions Demand Justice on Anniversary of Activist’s Murder

Four years after the tortured, lifeless body of Bangladesh garment worker organizer Aminul Islam was discovered in a ditch, his killers have yet to be arrested. Yesterday the Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation (BGIWF) and Bangladesh Center for...
Cambodia: Protests Decry Anti-Worker Labor Law

Cambodia: Protests Decry Anti-Worker Labor Law

Workers across Cambodia are waging rallies to protest a draft labor law that, according to the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), does not meet basic worker rights standards under international law. Carrying signs reading, “Do not create a law that...

Pakistan Women MPs to Push for Decent Work in Brick Kilns

Pakistan Women MPs to Push for Decent Work in Brick Kilns

The effort to secure decent work in Pakistan’s brick kiln industry took a step forward in recent weeks when 18 women parliamentarians vowed to take up the issue in the Punjab Legislature. The move followed their participation in a discussion organized by the...

‘I Want Women to Take Leadership Roles in Their Unions’

‘I Want Women to Take Leadership Roles in Their Unions’

Anju Begum, a garment worker and factory-level union leader in Bangladesh, describes how she became empowered through her union—and how she seeks to help other workers, especially women, advance their rights at work. “I want everyone, here and abroad, all workers,...

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