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“Organizing campaigns that are led by migrant workers themselves are making the impossible possible,” says Tefere Gebre, AFL-CIO executive vice president, succinctly summing up the discussion that opened the second day of the conference Labor Migration: Who Benefits?...
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Vulnerable Workers Targets of Gender-Based Violence
Participants in Monday’s final session of the Solidarity Center labor migration conference engaged in a lively discussion with panelists in a discussion of migrant workers’ vulnerability to gender-based violence. Lisa McGowan, senior specialist for gender equality,...
Civil Rights & Shared Prosperity for Migrant Workers
Saying that “labor migration takes place in an economic context of massive and growing global economic inequality,” Shawna Bader-Blau, Solidarity Center executive director, helped set the stage for the first day of the August 10–12 event, Labor Migration: Who...
Labor Migration Conference Starts Monday!
Human rights lawyer Preeda Tongcumnum is among the more than 200 migrant worker advocates gathering in Bogar, Indonesia, this week to take part in the Solidarity Center labor migration conference. As assistant to the secretary general at the Human Rights and...
Unions in Asia, Gulf Sign Migrant Worker Agreement
Trade unions from across Asia and in Arab Gulf countries signed a landmark memorandum of understanding (MOU) this week that promotes joint action to create a safe and rights-based environment for migrant workers. The first-ever such cross-regional agreement also...
Making the System Fair for Migrant Workers
Ishor, 24, migrated from Nepal to Malaysia last November to work for a company at Johor Bahru’s busy commercial shipping port. What he did not know before he arrived is that the job involved working 16-hour days and being physically abused and harassed by his...
Organizing Key to Assisting Migrant Workers
More than 300,000 domestic workers in Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of China have migrated from the Philippines, Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries seeking jobs to support their families. Recent high-profile instances of employer abuse against...
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,...
Liberia Law Boosts Rights of Informal-Economy Workers
Liberian domestic workers and other informal-economy workers in Liberia are set to receive significant wage gains, collective bargaining rights and labor law protection under the Decent Work Bill signed today by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. The bill takes effect...
ILO: Failure to Protect Informal-Economy Workers Is Not an Option
Rarely do governments admit failing their citizens. However, on Friday the 193-member states of the United Nations did just that when they voted to rectify their failure to uphold the rights of workers and to ensure decent working conditions for more than half of the...
Economic Growth without Jobs Fuels Migration
Governments of migrants’ countries of origin could be doing much more to harness the phenomenon of labor migration toward inclusive growth, according to a new report that investigated high-migration communities in Indonesia. The study, which examined the role of labor...
ILO: Precarious Work Rises, Incomes Fall around the World
More than 60 percent of workers worldwide, predominantly women, are in temporary, part-time or short-term jobs in which wages are falling, a growing trend that is fueling global income inequality and poverty, according to an International Labor Organization (ILO)...
Fact Sheets & Advisories
Fact Sheets Bargaining for Decent Work and Beyond (Honduras), May 2022 Care Work and the Global Economy, February 2022 Domestic Violence is a Worker Rights Issue, February 2022 Gender Equality and Work Fact Sheet, February 2022 Gender-Based Violence and Harassment in...
“My Work Is Decent Work and I Want Decent Pay”
Myrtle Witbooi spent decades toiling as a domestic worker in South Africa and later built on her experience to become a national and global leader for domestic worker rights. Now general secretary of the South African Domestic Service and Allied Workers Union...
Violence at the Workplace: ‘They Treated Us Like Slaves’
Gender-based violence on the job occurs far more often than most people realize, and domestic workers—isolated in individual homes—are especially vulnerable to abuse, said domestic workers, union organizers and experts Wednesday at a panel discussion focusing on women...
How Much Progress for Women in Past 20 Years?
As more than 8,500 union members and other civil society activists gather at the United Nations in New York for the Commission on the Status of Women meeting, new research shows women have made some gains in the two decades since the landmark global meeting on women...
Dominican Republic Market Vendors Stand up for Rights
Amparo Lara sells plantains in San Cristobal’s Municipal Market, vying for customers along with dozens of other vendors selling mangoes, guavas and a range of vegetables and herbs along with services, such as shoe repair. The increasing lack of full-time jobs around...
Migrant Workers Send Solidarity Message
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...
Our Approach
The Solidarity Center empowers people around the world to earn safe and dignified livelihoods, exercise their fundamental labor rights and have a voice in shaping work conditions and public policies that impact their lives. Workers accomplish this by organizing and...