Dec 12, 2024
Shawna Bader-Blau, Executive Director, Solidarity Center:
“Millions of Saudi and migrant workers support the Saudi economy each year, and each year hundreds of thousands of them face severe labor rights abuses such as wage theft, health and safety violations (including heat stress from extreme temperatures), and gender based violence and harassment. We call on FIFA and corporations supporting the World Cup to ensure that Saudi Arabia adheres to all international labor standards for all workers in the Kingdom, and that workers receive full remedy for any violations.”
Read the full statement here.
Dec 6, 2024
Gold miners in Colombia won their first-ever contract that included an annual 3.5 percent wage increase and coverage of all sick leave up to 180 days. The collective bargaining agreement with international corporation Zijin Continental Gold, critically includes respect and protection of workers’ rights on the job. Bolstering skills training and strengthening miners collaboration is part of Solidarity Center’s regional efforts in Brazil, Colombia and Peru, where multinational corporations force miners to endure long days in difficult and often dangerous conditions.
Nov 26, 2024
Violence and harassment in the world of work is a persistent and significant challenge faced by workers worldwide. The ILO Violence and Harassment Convention, 2019 (No. 190) and its accompanying Recommendation (No. 206) clearly spell out the right of everyone to a world of work free from violence and harassment, including gender-based violence and harassment. It covers all forms of violence and harassment, be it verbal, physical, social, sexual or psychological, that occurs anytime and anywhere in all places and circumstances related to work, regardless of the location, size, sector or type of enterprise.
Sep 19, 2024
In a precedent-setting case before the International Court of Justice, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) provided written comments last week in a legal dispute over the right to strike.
The dispute, filed in 2023, is the first submitted by the United Nations International Labor Organization (ILO) to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). It arises from the refusal, in 2012, of the ILO Employers Group to recognize that the right to strike is protected by ILO Convention 87, as the ILO supervisory system has recognized since the 1950s.
On September 13, 2024, the ITUC filed its written comments. Oral arguments are expected to begin in the coming months. The ICJ’s advisory opinion is expected in 2025.
“This case is consequential, as the protection of the right to strike is essential not only for workplace democracy, but for democracy as a whole,” says Jeffrey Vogt, Solidarity Center rule of law director, co-author of the book The Right to Strike in International Law and member of the ITUC’s legal team. “The right of workers to withdraw their labor is so fundamentally intrinsic to the exercise of freedom of association and the right to organize that, without it, their very survival and the protection of their dignity as workers is at stake. We hope that the ICJ will agree with our reasoning as contained in our brief and affirm that the right to strike is protected under international law, including ILO Convention No. 87.”
The filing was made on behalf of ITUC General Secretary Luc Triangle and Paapa Kwasi Danquah, ITUC director of legal and human and trade union rights, and supported by members of the ITUC legal team, including Vogt, Catelene Passchier, workers vice-chair of the ILO Governing Body, and Monica Tepfer, an ITUC lawyer.
