On December 18, we join workers around the world to celebrate International Migrants Day. It is a day to honor and support the women and men who often labor under limited legal protections and struggle daily to access their right to decent work. In Jordan, domestic...
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Building & Wood Workers Win Meany-Kirkland Award
The Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWI) and its affiliates received the 2014 AFL-CIO George Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award in a ceremony last night in Washington, D.C., where they were honored for their work in bringing justice to construction...
Migrant Workers ‘Shouldn’t Have to Be Tortured to Have Work’
Three times each month, dozens of women gather in dusty courtyards in rural towns in Manikganj, Dinazpur or other districts across Bangladesh to learn all they can about the only means by which they can support their families: migrating to another country for work. In...
Report: Tunisia’s Informal Sector Workers Lack Decent Conditions
Tunisia is among many countries around the world seeing rapid growth in their informal economies. In 2013, Tunisia’s informal economy accounted for 38 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), up from 30 percent in 2010. A new study by the Tunisian...
Former Child Domestic Worker: ‘No Where to Run and Get Help’
At age 9, Evelyn Chumbow was trafficked overseas from Cameroon to become a domestic worker for a family in Maryland. She worked from 6 a.m. to midnight, seven days a week, was forced to sleep on the floor without a room of her own and regularly beaten. Each day, she...
UN Convention on Economic Rights a Powerful Tool for Workers
Worker rights advocates have lots of tools available to them to help foster safe and healthy workplaces, family-supporting wages and social protections. One item in the toolbox is rule of law—and a recent Solidarity Center analysis of Mexican laws and policies through...
Zimbabwe Women Workers Key to Making Workplace Rights a Reality
Zimbabwe women workers are key to ensuring the implementation of workplace rights established by the country’s new constitution, says Fiona Magaya, coordinator of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) Gender Department. The constitution, ratified in 2013, also...
Migrant Workers, Unions Fight for Decent Work in Latin America
This week, eight construction union federation from six South and Central American countries came together in Costa Rica to focus on migrant workers and the issues they face in order to help migrants working in construction to organize and to improve union capacity to...
Peru: Women Farm Workers Build Empowerment Network
Rosa Pérez was brought to Lima, Peru, from the country’s Northern Sierra when she was a child to work as a domestic worker. As a young adult, she moved to the farming region of La Libertad to make her own way as an agricultural laborer. Thirty years, four children and...
Migrant Workers Vulnerable, Exploited Across the Globe
From the moment Yani arrived in Malaysia for her job as a domestic worker, she toiled for a solid year with no break. Her day started at 4 a.m. and went long into the night, seven days a week, as she cleaned and took care of her employer’s child. Yani eventually...
Informal Workers’ Organizing (WIEGO, 2013)
In overviewing self-organizing among such informal economy workers as waste pickers, domestic workers and construction workers, this report finds the lines are increasingly blurred between jobs in the formal and informal economies. This Solidarity Center report is...
Organizing Women Workers in Palestine
By 4 a.m., Tamam Abdel Hafiz's colleagues are already at the Qalqilia border crossing, talking with some of the more than 4,000 workers who head for jobs each day from Palestine to Israel and West Bank settlements. Hafiz and three other members of the organizing team...
Report Chronicles Rise of Domestic Worker Movement
Domestic workers toil often invisibly, in private homes where they often are subject to abuse. They typically have no protections under nations’ labor laws. Their labor is sometimes not recognized as “real” work. Yet despite the many obstacles they face, domestic...
World Day for Decent Work: Migrant Workers Often Exploited
At age 22, N. Naga Durga Bhavani left her small village in India for Bahrain, where she hoped a job as a domestic worker would help pay for her young daughter’s heart surgery. But when she arrived, after paying labor recruiters the equivalent of nearly two months’...
Informal Workers and Collective Bargaining: Case Studies from India, Georgia, Brazil, Liberia and Uruguay (WIEGO, 2013)
This report details a set of case studies on collective bargaining by informal workers in four different countries: Waste pickers in Minas Gerais state in Brazil, beedi workers in India, Georgia minibus taxi workers and street vendors in Monrovia, Liberia. The study...
Workshop Women Workers Organizing: Examples from India, Brazil and Liberia
Workshop Women Workers Organizing: Examples from India, Brazil and Liberia Panelists • Geeta Koshti, Coordinator, Legal Department, Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), India • Sonia Maria Dias, Ph.D, Sector Specialist, WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment:...
Workshop Young Workers: Challenges Now and in the Future Workshop
Workshop Young Workers: Challenges Now and in the Future Workshop Panelists • Khamati Mugalla, Executive Secretary, East Africa Trade Union Confederation (EATUC) • Aruna Jain, Working America, AFL-CIO, USA Facilitator • Molly McCoy, Solidarity Center Regional Program...
Workshop Utilizing Legal Mechanisms to Fight Gender Discrimination and Support Women Workers Rights
Workshop Utilizing Legal Mechanisms to Fight Gender Discrimination and Support Women Workers Rights Panelists • Ziona Tanzer, Solidarity Center Law Program Counsel, Rule of Law • Matt Hersey, Solidarity Center Rule of Law Program Officer • Lais Abramo, Director, ILO...
Catalysts for Change: Workers Forging Democracy with Innovation
In Tunisia, women helped spur protests that ended autocratic regimes in their country and throughout the Arabic-speaking world. Zimbabwe trade unionists fought years of economic deterioration with innovative research. Across the Dominican Republic, domestic workers...
Colombia: Many Women Workers Face Job Discrimination
In Colombia, “even when there’s an improvement in the overall economy, women don’t see any improvement,” says Sohely Rua Catañeda. As a result, many women who are unable to secure formal employment are forced into the informal sector to support themselves and their...