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As workers around the world celebrated International Labor Day at the beginning of May, more than 500 migrant workers on the Thai-Burmese border took collective action to demand that their employer improve wages and working conditions in a garment factory where they...
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Organizing Workers in the Informal Economy: A Global Challenge and Imperative
The issues, needs, and experiences of informal workers were the focus of a two-day conference held in Cape Town, South Africa, and organized by the Solidarity Center. With the support of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the December 2–3 meeting...
New Radio Show in Jordan Showcases Worker Issues
Callers to a recent radio show about taxi workers in Jordan had many questions, including: Why are taxi drivers classified as independent contractors rather than as employees who are eligible for better wages and benefits? Why do Jordan’s laws prohibit taxi drivers...
Video: Ending Gender Violence at Work with Collective Action
Seeking a job to support her family but lacking opportunity in her native Bangladesh, Shahida became a domestic worker far from her home. Beyond duties in her employer's home, she was forced to work at the houses of several of his relatives, giving her little time to...
Reaching Kenya Communities on Realities of Migrating for Jobs
In Kenya, where 2.5 million people toil in irregular, precarious jobs—compared with 900,000 in the formal sector—many workers are unable to support their families and so become targets for the labor brokers who haunt villages and cities and convince them to get jobs...
Labor Migration Conference: ‘Our Voices Will Be Strong’
“We want to make our voices heard and strong in Africa and globally. Our voices will be strong,” Joel Odigie told the more than 130 union leaders, migrant worker rights advocates and top international human rights officials in the closing session of the Solidarity...
‘Create Decent Work at Home so Labor Migration Is a Choice’
The respect and dignity of labor migrants is under increasing threat, says Kassahun Follo, first vice president, International Trade Union Confederation-Africa, as migrant workers are demonized and denied basic rights, actions driven by exploitation, racism and...
Make Every Job a Good Job
Around the world, workers, their unions and other associations are striving to promote the rights of working people at their jobs and in their everyday lives. While every job has value, not all jobs are “good jobs.” Millions of jobs around the world do not offer the...
Labor Migration: A Solidarity Center Conference
In Malaysia, up to 40 percent of workers are migrants from other countries. Over in Bangladesh, more than 600,000 workers migrate each year for jobs, and at least 5 million Bangladeshis currently work in other countries. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries on...
ILO Report: Trafficking and Forced Labor Are Unacceptable
Global demand for the services of domestic workers, including household workers, caregivers and cooks, has been steadily rising in recent years. Yet as the International Labor Organization (ILO) shows in a new report on migrants from South Asia, domestic workers,...
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: How Unions Meet COVID-19 Challenges—and Beyond
When the Nigerian government sought to raise taxes on basic goods and decrease subsidies on key items like fuel as millions of workers struggled without jobs or wages during the COVID-19 pandemic, the 4 million members of the Nigerian Labor Congress (NLC) successfully...
Union Women on the COVID-19 Front Lines: The Road to Recovery
The COVID-19 pandemic has hit workers hard—but women have especially suffered compared with men, experiencing higher rates of unemployment, discrimination and exposure to the virus, and skyrocketing rates of gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH), speakers said...
Billions of Us, One Just Future: Solidarity Center Podcast Launches Today
“Violence and harassment happens to all workers, irrespective of your gender,” says Brenda Modise, a union activist in South Africa. “It doesn't matter whether they are men and women, old young LGBTQI community or anyone, but we are addressing violence and harassment...
LEADERSHIP
Shawna Bader-Blau, Executive Director Shawna Bader-Blau leads the Solidarity Center—the largest global worker rights organization based in the United States—and its 300-plus staff in headquarters and some 30 field offices, and programs in more than 60 countries....
Report: Climate Change in Bangladesh Drives Worker Vulnerability, Poverty
Underscoring the immediate risk of severe climate-induced weather events in South Asia, Cyclone Amphan last month slammed into the coast of eastern India and southern Bangladesh, destroying thousands of homes and killing at least 88 people. A new Solidarity Center...
Women & Their Unions Stand Strong during COVID-19
In Tunisia, 150 women garment workers self-quarantined in their factory to manufacture desperately needed protective masks, churning out 50,000 a day as the COVID-19 crisis broke out. The South African Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union (SACTWU) reached an agreement...
From Haiti to Kenya, Unions Take Action on COVID-19
Just as the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the massive global economic and social inequality around the world, with workers in the informal economy and supply chains, and migrant workers—many of whom are women—especially marginalized, so, too, does it...
COVID-19: Unions Mobilize Across Middle East/N. Africa
Across the Middle East and North Africa, unions and worker associations are mobilizing to educate workers about their rights during the COVID-19 crisis, provide them with resources to protect themselves and their families, and push for fair treatment at the workplace....