Aug 2, 2024
Millions of workers still face widespread discrimination in employment and at the workplace—even though 65 years ago, 175 countries adopted an international convention seeking equality of opportunity and treatment.
“We still find that employers find very clever ways in which to create vulnerability in the workplace,” said Nomzama Zondo, executive director of the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa, speaking this week at a panel in South Africa.
Panelists gathered in Johannesburg to discuss “A Promise Not Realised: The Right to Non-Discrimination in Work and Employment,” an Issue Brief by the International Lawyers Assisting Workers Network (ILAW) in collaboration with the Equal Rights Trust (ERT).
The panel in South Africa follows an initial launch in spring, and is among several planned this year in countries highlighted by the report, including Colombia, Brazil, the United Kingdom and India.
“A Promise Not Realised” first looks at conventions countries have adopted, such as the 1958 International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 111 Discrimination in Respect of Employment and Occupation or Discrimination which creates a legal obligation on countries to prohibit and remedy discrimination at work.
Ultimately, the report identifies the means by which countries can create enabling environments to effectively prevent workplace discrimination and provide labor justice when it occurs.
Discrimination Widespread in Informal Economy
The report also specifically addresses non-discrimination in the informal economy, recognizing that those working informally lack recourse to justice and remedy.
“There is an inherently discriminatory dynamic between those within and without the formal employment sector,” says Jim Fitzgerald, ERT director, overviewing the report in the initial webinar earlier this year.
Panelists said the research confirms that informal economy workers are more likely to experience discrimination and mistreatment because of a lack of recourse to justice and remedy.
Ensuring non-discrimination in the informal economy is key: Some 2 billion people rely on informal work as a source of income, according to the ILO.
Many informal workers also are migrant workers. As in the majority of countries in the report, some South African respondents noted that their legal status means migrant workers may be disproportionately concentrated in particular forms of work and experience unique challenges in these areas.
As Fitzgerald said: “International law does not simply require states to prohibit discrimination. It requires states to eliminate discrimination through ‘all appropriate means.’ “
Platform workers are a growing group of informal sector workers globally, including in South Africa, where Omar Parker described how recently formed unions are grappling with achieving rights. “The only way now for us in the English e-hailing sector is to be organized independently,” said Parker, general secretary for the Western cape E-hailing Association (WCEA).
Unions a Key Driver of Change
The report finds that in nearly all countries studied, experts spoke of the central role of trade unions in achieving legislative reform on equality and non-discrimination.
With a collective bargaining agreement, union members also can negotiate for equality of opportunity and treatment with respect to employment occupation, with a view to eliminating any discrimination.
Participants noted that governments must create an enabling environment for workers to exercise their freedom of association, enabling them to demand equality in the workplace.
“Discrimination is fundamental about power asymmetries in a society, which can most effectively be addressed through collective action,” said Jeff Vogt, ILAW Network chair and Rule of Law director at the Solidarity Center. “We hope that this research is useful in providing evidence and examples as to how laws and institutions can be improved to make anti-discrimination laws more effective in practice through collective protection and redress.”
In addition to Parker and Zondo, panelists included: Siza Nyiko Mlambo, leader of the Simunye Workers Forum; and speakers Sam Barnes, ERT researcher; and Debbie Collier, a lead report researcher, member of the Center for Transformative Regulation of Work and law professor at the University of the Western Cape.
The ILAW Network, a project of the Solidarity Center, includes more than 1,300 members in 95 countries, regularly provides legal labor rights assistance and information, and publishes The Global Labour Rights Reporter on key issues in four languages.
Mar 20, 2024
In the latest effort by a Philippines luxury bag manufacturer to break a nascent union, nearly 1,000 workers were forced to take leave from January until March, denying them three months wages. This is the second round of forced leave imposed at the 3,000-worker facility in recent months, and one more action by the company to dishearten organized workers.
In September, soon after the D’Luxe Bags Union won the election to represent workers at the factory, Patricio Tago, then union vice president, was abducted and imprisoned on false drug charges. The company has threatened to close the factory and transfer operations to a sister plant in the neighboring province. And workers face intimidation and increasingly difficult working conditions.
The Philippines is ranked as one of the 10 worst countries for working people by the International Trade Union Confederation, specifically for violence against and arrest of trade unionists, and union busting.
Union leaders are fighting to end the forced leave and to secure a strong collective bargaining agreement with D’Luxe Bags–which produces women’s bags for luxury brands like Coach and Michael Kors. The factory is owned by Luen Thai Holdings Ltd., a Hong Kong-based manufacturing and investment company.
Union President Angel Soliven said workplace conditions have declined since the union victory in September, and forced leave continues to occur despite quotas. While intimidation tactics often target union leaders directly, worsening work conditions affect everyone.
“They’ve been taking away our incentives in increments,” says Soliven. “We used to get 2,000 pesos (about $36) monthly before 2019, but now we only receive 5 pesos (about 9 cents) at the most.”
A lot of the workers depend on incentive pay to supplement their income, as the provincial minimum wage is only 10,000 pesos (about $180) per month.
“We also have to reach a target quota of 130 to 180 bags per day, and they threaten us with forced leave if we don’t meet that,” she says.
Despite the challenges, the union is determined to stand strong.
“We keep fighting so that we get to work in better conditions,” Soliven says.
Nov 8, 2023
While the rapid increase in app-based jobs around the world offers millions of workers additional avenues to ear money, it also creates new opportunities for employer exploitation through low wages, lack of health care and an absence of job safety–and that means unions must take action, says Sarah McKenzie, Solidarity Center program coordination director.
“If we’re going to make sure that workers’ rights are upheld and that we continue to create decent workplaces, we’ve got to care. We’ve got to care about where the work is going and where the workers are,” she says.
In the final episode of The Solidarity Center Podcast series, My Boss Is A Robot, Solidarity Center Executive Director and Podcast Host Shawna Bader-Blau speaks with two Solidarity Center union organizers to explore strategies for ensuring a decent future of work for delivery drivers and others engaged in platform-based jobs.
“Employers will continue to shift more and more toward this organization of work if they think it’s a way to avoid having to be accountable to their workers, a way to avoid labor unions,” says Andrew Tillet-Saks, Solidarity Center organizing director. “So I think in terms of trying to build the whole global labor movement, it’s really the nut that the global labor movement has to crack.”
Throughout the six-part My Boss Is a Robot series, app-based drivers and experts highlight the precarity of work through platforms, where algorithms are the new face of an old scourge: the bad boss. Download this episode and the full My Boss Is a Robot series here or at Spotify, Amazon, Stitcher or wherever you subscribe to your favorite podcasts.
Nov 2, 2023
Nigeria Labor Congress (NLC) President Joe Ajaero was beaten and arrested November 1 as workers rallied to protest unpaid wages in Imo state in southeastern Nigeria. Police reportedly beat Ajaero and assaulted protesting workers with machetes and confiscated their mobile devices. Some NLC and Nigeria Trade Union Congress members who attended the rally say they have not been paid for up to 20 months. Ajaero was released from police custody to a hospital because of his injuries.
Solidarity Center Executive Director Shawna Bader-Blau offered this statement:
“The Solidarity Center joins calls by the Nigeria Labor Congress and the Nigeria Trade Union Congress in condemning the assaults on NLC President Joe Ajaero and the workers who rightfully stood up to receive the pay that they worked for and deserve. Violence and bloodshed have no place in the democratic exercise of the freedom to peacefully gather. The fundamental right of workers to be paid what they are owed is one of the bedrock principles of democratic societies. Efforts to intimidate workers and their elected leaders through brutal attacks must be called out for what they are: violations of fundamental human rights as guaranteed by international conventions and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, all of which the Nigerian government has signed.”
Our thoughts are with Joe Ajaero and all those injured as we call for justice to the perpetrators of these crimes.”
Oct 26, 2023
In the Philippines, 200 Grab Food Delivery Riders, through the National Union of Food Delivery Riders (RIDERS-SENTRO), waged a one-day strike October 25 to protest a fare decrease scheduled to start that day.
Grab’s new rate will reduce the base fare from 45 pesos to 35 pesos per order (from 79 cents to 61 cents), and the per kilometer compensation from 10 pesos to 7 pesos (from 18 cents to 12 cents).
The drivers turned off their apps and held a unity ride around the Quezon Memorial Circle in metro Manila, with signs on their motorcycle delivery boxes demanding higher fares and fairly calculated compensation. Grab riders also are seeking comprehensive insurance coverage, social protections and union recognition.
“If the goal of this new fare matrix is to ease the burden on Grab’s customers, it should not come at the expense of the platform’s riders,” Philippines Sen. Risa Hontiveros said in a video statement supporting the delivery riders.
The rally is the second in a week, with more than 80 drivers and their union protesting on October 19 at the Boy Scout Circle in Metro Manila.
Some riders who took part in the rallies reported that their Grab accounts were suspended or terminated, and RIDERS-SENTRO is planning legal action seeking to reinstate them. Several drivers in Pampanga were unjustly fired late last year following a worker rights rally they attended as drivers formed the Pampanga chapter of the National Union of Delivery Riders (RIDERS). They appealed the decision to the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) and the case is ongoing.
App-Based Drivers Advocate for Safe Jobs, Better Wages
Despite the challenges helping delivery drivers form unions—drivers have no single workplace and platform companies refuse to acknowledge they are employers so as to avoid fair compensation—RIDERS-SENTRO, a Solidarity Center partner, has made big gains.
(SENTRO General Secretary Josua Mata and John Jay Chan, a driver and union organizer, discuss how they are mobilizing drivers on the latest My Boss Is a Robot Solidarity Center Podcast episode.)
In just over a year, the union established four chapters of delivery drivers in multiple cities and islands and is organizing drivers in another 15 cities. Drivers are also engaging with local and national governments and, together with their union, crafted a Charter of Rights that lists basic rights for gig workers: a minimum wage, a written contract, health or accident insurance, and access to the country’s social security services. The Senate is now considering the bill.
Drivers also successfully advocated for a local ordinance in Cebu City to create free outdoor “riders’ hubs” in commercial outlets with seating and parking to offer drivers shelter from heat and rain.
