Media Highlights

Uzbekistan continued using forced labor, including children, for the country’s recent cotton harvest, according to a recent report by the Uzbek-German Forum, notes the Solidarity Center, a member of the Cotton Campaign.

A year after two dozen large fashion brands wrote the Cambodian government requesting investigation into the killing by security forces  of 5 garment workers protesting low wages, there has been no investigation or compensation for families of the deceased according to Dave Welsh, Solidarity Center-Cambodia.

Five years after the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti, workers are still struggling to pay for transportation, food and housing, as the cost of living rises exponentially while wages fail to keep pace, writes the Solidarity Center’s Tula Connell.

In a major victory for Cambodian garment workers and their allies last year European brands, including H&M and Zara, pledged a pay increase for garment workers at supplier factories. David Welsh, director of Solidarity Center programs in Cambodia, together with Cambodian factory workers are calling for American brands to follow suit.

Earl Brown, labor lawyer and China program director at the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center, argued that “social auditing is like staging Shakespeare’s Hamlet without the prince of Denmark.”

Labor ministers from Gulf and Asian countries meeting on November 26 and 27, 2014, should improve labor law protection, reform abusive immigration policies and increase dialogue with trade unions and nongovernmental groups, 90 human rights organizations and unions (among them, the Solidarity Center) said in a written statement.

“It’s not just increasing the monetary amount of the minimum wage, but looking at subsidizing where most of those expenses go to, and, currently, most of those expenses go to sub-standard housing and food for sub-standard nutrition that’s provided to workers,” said David Welsh, Solidarity Center Cambodia program director.

While the decision for next year’s floor salary lies with the Ministry of Labor’s Labor Advisory Committee (LAC), not the National Assembly, a larger support base for raised wages could help sway members of the committee to agree upon a number that unions find suitable, said Dave Welsh, country director for labor rights group Solidarity Center.

Workers in Asia’s cheapest garment-production hubs are increasingly agitating for better pay, and some big foreign clothing brands say they are willing to help finance wage increases. “It’s unprecedented. It’s a recognition of the role they play,” said David Welsh, Cambodia program director for the Solidarity Center.