Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, plantation workers, worker rights, unions, Solidarity Center

With local partners, the Solidarity Center conducts training on addressing and preventing sexual harassment and other forms of gender-based violence at work. Credit: Solidarity Center/Mohamed Fizer

  The Solidarity Center works with a range of Sri Lankan trade unions and community organizations, assisting workers in light manufacturing, on tea plantations and other sectors to secure a collective voice through unions and improve wages, workplace safety and health, and other fundamental rights on the job. Together with local partners, Solidarity Center conducts training around addressing and preventing sexual harassment and other forms of gender-based violence at work. And, as millions of Sri Lankans are being driven from their homes and families to seek economic opportunities overseas, Solidarity Center and human rights advocates champion legislative measures designed to inform and protect workers who leave the country for jobs.

Media Contact

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

 

Sri Lanka Workers Wage Hunger Strike for Justice at Work

Some 400 workers at a factory in Sri Lanka have been on strike for more than two months, and two workers are waging a hunger strike to protest the firing of five union leaders. Workers say women have been subject to sexual abuse and other forms of gender-based...

Sri Lanka Garment Workers Stand up for Their Rights

Just outside Sri Lanka’s Bandaranaike International Airport, where more than 2 million tourists start their vacations each year, a different reality unfolds in the Katunayake export processing zone (EPZ). There, thousands of garment workers take their places in...

Sri Lanka Cleaning Workers Strategize on Gender Equality

Nearly 50 cleaning-sector employees from offices throughout Jaffna, Sri Lanka, discussed strategies for addressing gender-based violence at work and how unions can be instrumental in empowering workers to tackle the problem during a recent Solidarity Center training....
Worker Rights Violations Rampant in Jaffna, Sri Lanka

Worker Rights Violations Rampant in Jaffna, Sri Lanka

The 2009 end of Sri Lanka’s civil war was an opportunity for workers to return to the security and protections of the formal economy, which had been destabilized by 26 years of violence. However, a new Solidarity Center survey finds that peace has yet to bring the...

Workers in Post-Civil War Jaffna

Workers in Post-Civil War Jaffna

Although Sri Lanka's labor code sets the minimum wage, the maximum number of work hours per day and work days per week, and establishes rules around overtime and benefits, many employers in Jaffna, the country’s northern province, are flaunting the statutes. The vast...

Online Strategy in Sri Lanka Drawing Young Workers

Online Strategy in Sri Lanka Drawing Young Workers

In Sri Lanka, where the union movement faces challenges familiar to many union activists around the world—a shift from industrial to service jobs and a related decline in union membership—strategic online outreach is drawing young workers and expanding union...

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