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

 

Bangladesh: Unions Work to Secure Tannery Jobs

Union leaders and labor rights activists are demanding the government of Bangladesh secure jobs for tannery workers before taking punitive action against the industry for its role in environmental pollution. The demand was made at a discussion following the...

[Reuters] Thai airport workers seek compensation for lost lunch breaks

"It's hard to imagine a more essential worker than airport security officers in a country that relies predominantly on tourism, and yet what the current exercise of rights has exposed is the systematic undermining of basic rights," said [the Solidarity Center's]...

[Vice News] What Governments Don’t Want You To Know About Modern Slavery: Video

“But really, to make the change, there has to be institutional change … not just easy fixes,” said Neha Misra, Solidarity Center global lead for migration and human trafficking. “The systems and institutions that are used to manage migration around the world inherently make migrants vulnerable to trafficking. And yet governments don’t want to do anything about immigration systems.”

RIGHTS ADVOCATES BUILD SOUTHEAST ASIA CAMPAIGN AGAINST WAGE THEFT

RIGHTS ADVOCATES BUILD SOUTHEAST ASIA CAMPAIGN AGAINST WAGE THEFT

On this year’s July 30 World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, a coalition of rights organizations including the Solidarity Center are highlighting widespread wage theft perpetrated against Southeast Asia’s migrant workers. Although this form of labor exploitation...

Podcast: Myanmar Workers Stand Up for Democracy

Podcast: Myanmar Workers Stand Up for Democracy

After the military overthrew Myanmar’s democratically elected government in February, the country’s garment workers, most of them young women, were the first to stand up to defend their right to a free and peaceful society. Since then, workers have led peaceful...

Pin It on Pinterest