Nov 3, 2021
Police violence, which escalated during COVID-19, is part of a rising tide of global crackdowns targeting marginalized communities, workers and young people struggling to support themselves. The latest episode of The Solidarity Center Podcast looks at how workers in Colombia and Nigeria—targeted by police brutality as they staged peaceful protests to address inequality—are joining and leading large movements to demand new levels of accountability from and reform of the authorities charged with protecting and serving their communities.
Podcast host and Solidarity Center Executive Director Shawna Bader-Blau talks with Francisco Maltés, president of the Unitary Workers Center (CUT) in Colombia, and Gbenga, general secretary and founder of the Federation of Informal Workers’ Organizations of Nigeria. They describe how workers, especially those living most on the edge, are taking back their communities by standing up for justice and opposing decades of widespread, systemic corruption that feeds off state-sponsored violence.
“Justice and police activity in Colombia can be characterized as being directed at poor people,” says Maltés. “The National Strike Committee has proposed a bill for reforming the national police force.”
Catch More from Season Two!
Listen to this and all Solidarity Center episodes here or at Spotify, Amazon, Stitcher, Castbox or wherever you subscribe to your favorite podcasts.
Catch recent Season Two episodes:
The Solidarity Center Podcast, “Billions of Us, One Just Future,” highlights conversations with workers (and other smart people) worldwide shaping the workplace for the better.
Nov 1, 2021
A magistrate court in Nigeria this week recommended prosecution of a man accused of sexually assaulting a minor in a bustling Lagos open marketplace—and gender rights activists there say the move was the direct result of awareness training conducted with market vendors about their right to violence-free workplaces. Nasiru Umaru, 44, is now in KiriKiri correctional center. The girl was helping her mother make extra money by selling goods, as do many children forced to work in hazardous environments to ensure their families make enough to meet basic needs.
Bringing a case like this is rare in the market, says Onyeisi Chiemeke, an attorney with International Lawyers Assisting Workers network (ILAW), which is aiding with the prosecution. Chiemeke says a newly formed gender-based violence task force in the market brought attention to the alleged rape, and the case now goes to trial in Nigeria’s high court. ILAW, a project established in 2018 by the Solidarity Center, is the largest global network of workers’ rights lawyers and advocates.
Building Synergies to Fight Violence and Harassment
Amina Awal, Hausa language GBVH educator trainer, reaches out to workers in the Mile 12 Lagos market truck park. Credit: Solidarity Center / Nkechi Odinukwe
Following the 2019 adoption of Convention 190 at the International Labor Organization (ILO), union leaders at the Nigeria Labor Congress (NLC), together with the Solidarity Center, began training workers, seeking to put into practice C190’s extensive provisions on preventing and ending gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH) in the world of work.
“I think we are making a lot of progress, a lot of awareness,” says Rita Goyit, head of the NLC’s Department of Women and Youth and secretary of the NLC National Women Commission.
Mile 12 market vendors who took part in the training quickly formed a GBVH task force that worked with the NLC to develop a market code of conduct covering gender-based violence and harassment. The vendors also posted suggestion boxes for reporting GBVH, and the NLC’s Lagos State union chapter leader monitors the submissions and alerts the NLC when necessary.
Vendors also are creating posters to spread awareness and talking with other sellers at the vast, sprawling market, where thousands of people visit each day to buy vegetables, legumes and other food items.
NLC and market leaders at the Mile 12 market in Lagos partnered to raise awareness about gender-based violence and harassment at work. Courtesy: NLC
Key to the success of the trainings, says Goyit, is that they were held in local languages. “That was one of the strategies that really worked—it was a language they understood. People talked one-on-one in the local language.” Vendors from across Nigeria travel to Mile 12, the largest in Lagos, to sell their wares.
The NLC also is joining with unions and allied organizations in urging the government ratify C190. Ratifying an ILO convention signifies a country’s intention to be bound by its terms. Union activists worldwide are campaigning for its ratification, and nine countries have done so.
As the accused man awaits a court hearing, Chiemeke says the synergy between market vendors and lawyers is helping make concrete the rights that Convention 190 provides to violence-free environments.
Oct 28, 2021
Last week, 125 women improved their wages and working conditions through a new negotiated agreement with an Albanian subsidiary of an Italian multinational lighting company. The agreement, which ended a 15-day work stoppage, was supported by Solidarity Center Albania union partners Bashkimi i Sindikatave te Pavarura te Shqiperise (BSPSH) and Sindikata e Pavarur e Minatoreve te Shqiperise (SPMSH).
“An extraordinary example, these 125 women; an example to be followed by all!” said SPMSH-Albania President Gezim Kalaja, who partially credited the win to support from Confederazione Italiana Sindacati Lavoratori (CISL), European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), IndustriALL Europe, IndustriALL Global Union, Pan European Regional Council (PERC), PERC’s Women’s Committee and the Solidarity Center.
The agreement won substantial wage increases—7 percent during year one, 11 percent during year two and 17 percent during year three—and sidelined an employer-proposed reduction in the number of shifts available for workers.
Iliria-Electric Albania produces plastic components for lighting sold on the European market by Arditi Italy.
The win underscores the company’s course correction toward respect for fundamental labor rights, including the right to collective agreements and freedom of association in Albania, said IndustriALL Europe General Secretary Luc Triangle.
Oct 25, 2021
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 recommendation of the Standing Committee on Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change to close polluting tanneries in Hemayetpur, located in the Savar area, which is also home to much of the country’s garment sector. The discussion was organized by the Bangladesh Tannery Workers Union and the Solidarity Center.
Tannery Workers Union (TWU) President Abul Kalam Azad emphasized that tannery workers were not responsible for the pollution but would be hardest hit by the action.
“Workers are never responsible for the environmental pollution caused by the tannery industry,” Azad said. “On the contrary, effective measures should be taken to protect the tannery industry and workers by bringing those responsible for the waste management crisis and pollution of the environment due to their negligence and irresponsibility.”
Leather production is one of Bangladesh’s oldest industries, and tanneries employ 92 percent of all leather workers. The country’s leather exports satisfy one-tenth of world demand.
Tannery Waste Harming Communities
The leather industry is also a major polluter. For decades, tanneries in the main industrial site in Dhaka dumped 22,000 cubic meters of toxic waste daily into the Buriganga River, according to the government’s reports. The pollution wiped out aquatic life and forced the city to rely heavily on groundwater for washing and drinking.
In 2017, amid increasing international pressure about toxic environmental and working conditions in tanneries, the Bangladesh government ordered a massive relocation of the industry from Hazaribagh, a Dhaka neighborhood and one of the most polluted places on Earth, to the newly built Tannery Industrial Estate in Hemayetpur—just 14 miles outside of the capital. Of the 220 tanneries at the Dhaka site, 123 completed the move and are currently operating in Savar. The move impacted approximately 25,000 workers and their families.
The new site included a central effluent treatment plant (CETP) and facilities for chrome recovery, water treatment, and sludge treatment. However, the system is not treating all of the sludge and effluents produced by the factories, creating an additional environmental threat.
The local community says the Dhaleshwari River has become “unusable” and “toxic,” for themselves and their livestock, and farmers cannot use the river for irrigation, affecting their livelihoods.
At a recent discussion marking the 57th anniversary of the founding of the Tannery Workers Union, speakers called on the government to take steps to solve the existing problems of the industry and to build an environmentally friendly leather industry.
TWU General Secretary Abdul Maleque spoke of the union’s history. “Tannery Workers’ Union has been beside the workers for the last 57 years with the participation of all workers irrespective of any party affiliation,” said Maleque. “For the last 38 years, the Tannery Workers’ Union has been working to protect the rights and interests of workers by executing bilateral collective bargaining agreements with employers’ associations every two years, which is a unique example in the history of trade unions in Bangladesh. There is no alternative to organizing the workers and building strong workers’ unions to realize their rights.”
Oct 22, 2021
Afro-Brazilian union leader and city councilman Alexsandro Faria was murdered on October 13, 2021. Known as Sandro do Sindicato–or Sandro from the Union–Faria was on his way to a worker assembly when he was shot dead while driving a van in Duque de Caxias, the section of Rio de Janeiro where he lived.
Faria was the third city councilor in Duque to be killed this year. In 2018, Marielle Franco, a progressive Afro-Brazilian and lesbian city councilor representing one of Rio’s poorest districts, was assassinated, leading to global denunciations.
Faria’s union issued the following statement concerning his murder:
SITICOMMM (Union of Workers in Civil Construction, Industrial Assembly, Furniture, Marble and Granite and Wicker), repudiates the cowardly murder of fellow union leader and city councilor Alexsandro Silva Faria, Sandro do Sindicato.
All SITICOMMM leaders are in solidarity with his family and friends and deeply regret the loss of their loved one.
We emphasize the daily struggle of our comrade Sandro in defense of workers, especially in our city of Duque de Caxias, while he was acting as Union Director.
We also highlight his brief role as elected councilor with the support of 3,247 voters. In a short time in office, he was already bringing changes to the entire city, especially to the Pilar neighborhood.
Comrade Sandro is the third city councilor murdered this year in our municipality. These and other crimes need to be elucidated by the police, as they are a serious attack on the rule of law and democracy. These barbaric crimes cannot go unpunished!
Black, humble, who fought tirelessly for the workers, Sandro do Sindicato.
We want an answer! #SandroVive #SandroVive #SandroVive
“This is a huge loss,” says Solidarity Center Brazil Country Program Director Gonzalo Martinez de Vedia. “Sandro was a worker who moved up to lead a union, an Afro-Brazilian whose connections to the grassroots brought him to public office. That his career ended this way and that he is the third not to finish his term in that same position due to murder sends a troubling message to others aspiring to that path who come from similar backgrounds.”
The union is following the investigation into Faria’s murder closely. The International Trade Union Confederation ranks Brazil among the 10 worst countries in the world for worker rights, noting two murders of union leaders in 2020 as one of the drivers of this ranking.
Faria was buried at the Nossa Senhora do Pilar Cemetery, in Duque de Caxias, Thursday, October 14, 2021.
Oct 22, 2021
Climate justice activists are increasingly under attack across the globe by governments acting in concert with private interests, a trend that threatens civic freedoms for all, says the United Nation’s special rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association in a new report.
UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of assembly and of association Clément N. Voule
UN Special Rapporteur Clément N. Voule delivered the report to the UN General Assembly last week and then discussed its findings at a virtual side event October 15. At the event, Voule outlined the escalating threats to climate activists and their organizations, including criminalization of peaceful protests—the foundation of grassroots human rights advocacy campaigns. Of special concern, he said, are the use of state agencies and legislatures by private interests to impede or eliminate environmental defenders through physical attacks, intimidation, imprisonment and other judicial harassment, as well as restrictions on funding and travel to international climate justice venues.
More than 70 percent of human rights defenders killed each year are standing up for the environment, he said.
The report found a pattern of escalating threats that are undermining the effectiveness of environmental activists and their organizations worldwide, such as:
- Violence and intimidation
- The use of national security laws to surveil, charge or imprison environmental activists
- An increasing number of bans and restrictions against formerly legal protest methods, such as road blocking
- Ramped-up public smear campaigns that destroy activists’ reputations by painting them as extremists, foreign agents or terrorists
The report cited “powerful actors, including transnational fossil fuel, extractive, agribusiness and financial institutions,” that are pressuring governments to weaken their climate response and which “have supported parastatal organizations engaging in a variety of campaigns against climate justice activists, including online and direct violence.”
However, said Voule at the side event, “We must change the narrative. Environmental activists are not the enemy.”
The side event was led by Voule in cooperation with Earthrights International, European Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ECNL), Geneva Academy, Greenpeace International, International Center for Not-For-Profit Law (ICNL), International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) and the Solidarity Center. The event was moderated by Greenpeace International Legal Counsel Daniel Simon. Presenters included Permanent Mission of Costa Rica to the UN in New York Ambassador Rodrigo Carazo; Permanent Mission of Ireland to the UN in Geneva Ambassador Michael Gaffey; Earthrights International Climate Change Policy Adviser Natalia Gomez; First Nation Couchiching and U.S.-based Giniw Collective Founder Tara Houska; economist and Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) Labor Market Policy Coordinator Lebogang Mulaisi and Secretary General’s Envoy on Youth Jayathma Wickramanayake.
COSATU Labor Market Policy Coordinator Lebogang Mulaisi
COSATU is joining the climate justice fight, said panelist Lebogang Mulaisi, because working people—especially those in the informal sector unfairly unprotected by labor laws and excluded from social safety nets—are the group most impacted by climate change. Unions are natural allies of defenders of community environmental rights because workers are from communities, she said.
“Climate justice is for everyone, and climate justice is now,” she said.
Unions will ally with the environmental justice movement to defend everyone’s rights, Mulaisi added, because they can only fight effectively for decent jobs while retaining the right to legally mobilize “mass social power” when negotiations at the conference table fail.
All states must ensure that all workers are guaranteed the right to associate, including the right to strike, and to bargain collectively at all levels, including over matters related to climate change and just transitions, recommends the report.
Unions Are Integral to the Climate Justice Movement
The report finds that unions are integral to states’ efforts to meet the objectives of the legally-binding Paris Agreement, which calls for states to “respect, promote and consider their respective obligations on human rights” and rights of indigenous peoples, as well as to take into account “the imperatives of a just transition of the workforce and the creation of decent work and quality jobs in accordance with nationally defined development priorities.”
Unions are helping states achieve these objectives by:
- Advocating for a just-transition agenda, which is a worker-led framework demanding a fair and democratic approach from governments that are shifting their economies to sustainable production—including application of a range of social interventions that are needed to secure worker rights and livelihoods
- Advancing a climate justice agenda and influencing employers at workplace, sectoral, national and international levels to transition to clean energy and address environmental degradation.
The effectiveness of workers and unions to drive inclusive climate solutions is being hampered by issues that must be addressed and resolved, including:
- Regular exclusion of unions and workers from critical climate discussions and policy design and planning, such as those associated with nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and job-loss mitigation projects developed under the Paris Agreement
- Through the exclusion of large swaths of workers from labor laws, barriers to those workers’ right to exercise freedom of association and peaceful assembly—with migrant workers and those employed in agricultural or informal sectors, or by foreign investors, being especially vulnerable.
Governments and employers must engage with workers and their organizations to develop climate and just transition policies, says the report because “[a]ddressing the climate crisis and ensuring a just transition require the existence of a vibrant and dynamic civil society.”
English
Arabic
Bengali
Chinese (Simplified)
French
Georgian
Hausa
Indonesian
Kurdish (Kurmanji)
Kyrgyz
Portuguese
Russian
Serbian
Sesotho
Sinhala
Spanish
Swahili
Tamil
Ukrainian
Zulu