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...
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Domestic Workers: ‘Bought and Paid for in the Gulf States’
On a trip to Kuwait two years ago, Nisha Varia from Human Rights Watch visited a hospital where two rooms were filled with injured domestic workers who had tried to escape from their employers’ homes. Trapped in abusive situations, the women jumped from windows or...
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...
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...
Dominican Republic Plan for Migrants Rife with Irregularities
The Dominican Republic’s “regularization” plan—created to provide legal status to migrants with documents—is rife with “irregularities,” according to Alexis Roselie, spokeswoman for the National Coordinator for Immigration Justice and Human Rights and an organizer for...
Forced Labor: Panel Spotlights Migrant Worker Plight in Mideast
Migrant workers to the Arabian Gulf states are rarely covered by labor law and generally denied the ability to exercise fundamental human rights, including freedom of association, which makes them vulnerable to exploitation and abuse, said panelists at a...
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...
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...
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’...
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...
Dominican Republic: Domestic Workers Struggle for Rights
Workers this week are marking the second anniversary of the historic passage of a global standard covering the rights of domestic workers. The International Labor Organization (ILO) “Decent Work for Domestic Workers Convention (No. 189) covers written employment...
AFL-CIO Gives Human Rights Award to Domestic Workers Network
The AFL-CIO will give the International Domestic Workers Network (IDWN) the 2013 George Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award. The IDWN, a Solidarity Center partner, brings together domestic workers from around the world, building bridges between unions and domestic...
SRI LANKA: Migrants Gain Voice and Protections, Sources (2013)
The primary sources for this publication were first-person interviews conducted by the Solidarity Center. Other sources are noted below. "Sri Lanka," BBC Profile-South Asia, March 25, 2013. "Tsunami Death Toll," CNN, February 22, 2005. "More Sri Lankans Suffering...
Sri Lanka: A Workers Center Offers a Model for Aiding Migrant Workers
With no other option to support her family in her native Sri Lanka, Nalani Samarasinghe, 41, has moved to Qatar three times for jobs ranging from 11 months to three years. At her last job as a domestic worker, she was expected to work between 5 a.m. and 1 a.m. daily...
South Africa Domestic Workers Strategize with U.S. Counterparts
Clapping and singing “women must be praised,” a traditional South African protest song from the years of apartheid oppression, eight domestic workers from South Africa gathered with their American sisters and brothers from the United Domestic Workers of America...
Nicaragua the Third Nation to Adopt Domestic Work Standard
Nicaragua this week became the third country to ratify the International Labor Organization (ILO) convention on domestic workers. An ILO “convention” sets international labor standards, and the “Decent Work for Domestic Workers” convention addresses issues such as...
Victory for Domestic Workers as Philippines Ratifies C189
In a victory for domestic workers in the Philippines and around the world who are trying to secure decent wages, benefits and recognition, the Philippines is the second country to ratify International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 189, Decent Work for Domestic...
New Laws Would Grant Social Protections to 300,000 Dominican Domestic Workers
Two groundbreaking pieces of legislation are poised to bring 300,000 domestic workers in the Dominican Republic into the national social security system, providing them for the first time with a minimum wage, health care, pension, and other social protections to which...
International Domestic Workers Day
A year after the adoption of International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 189, Decent Work for Domestic Workers, domestic workers declared June 16 International Domestic Workers Day. Domestic workers worldwide celebrated this historic victory. The Solidarity...