Aug 30, 2024
The future of children—their education, development and eventual livelihoods—is an essential reason for ending the war in Sudan, according to the Teachers’ Campaign to End the War.
The Sudanese Teachers Committee, which organized the peace initiative, is part of the Sudanese Civil and Labor Coalition that includes labor and civil society organizations, and is a member of al Taqadum-Sudanese Civil Front movement.
Under the banner, “Teachers are builders of civilizations and advocates of peace,” the Sudanese Teachers Committee points out that no family is “untouched by the destruction caused by the war,” and notes that teachers are the most capable in leading the movement by rejecting the war, with education as the key to achieving peace.
The war in Sudan, which began April 15, 2023, has resulted in the killing, displacement and starvation of millions of people, as well as the destruction of vital public institutions. Nearly 26 million people, half of Sudan’s population, are facing acute hunger. More than 12 million people have been displaced by fighting between a military government and a paramilitary group.
Some 19 million children are out of school, while teachers have not received wages since the start of the war. The committee is serving the public by providing school—at least 6,000 facilities—in shelters.
Reaching Out for Children’s Education
On a Facebook page, which now includes 118,000 followers, the Solidarity Center-backed committee has added dozens of first-person videos by those calling for an end to war, and is campaigning for students’ ability to learn to read and return to school.
Committee leaders note that receiving an education is a basic right as stipulated in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, a United Nations treaty signed by Sudan.
The committee also has created a series of posters illustrating the destructive actions of war and how children thrive with education and peace.
“Peace is a means to achieve comprehensive economic and social development, and through it societies advance,” the committee says. “There is no renaissance and development in a country suffering from wars, division and conflicts.”
Aug 20, 2024
With the unexpected shift in Bangladesh political leadership, garment workers say they are hopeful but cautious about the effect on their wages, working conditions and fundamental civil rights, such as the freedom to form unions.
“We hope something positive will happen. However, after the fall of the government, some factories … were prevented from opening in some places,” one factory-level union representative* told the Solidarity Center. “It should not happen.”
After weeks of peaceful student protest were met with deadly government suppression, long-term Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was forced to flee the country on August 4. Students were rallying against a government jobs quota system granting coveted decent work opportunities to family veterans of the 1971 Bangladesh war for independence. More than 600 protestors have been killed.
The economy of Bangladesh, the world’s second-largest garment exporter, depends on garment factories, but producers say customers are concerned about violence and disruption. In 2023, 4 million garment workers contributed 85 percent of Bangladesh’s $55 billion in annual exports.
The recent disruptions, including a government internet shutdown, closed factories, but some garment workers were back to work August 7.
“We only wish our garment sector to thrive,” another worker said. “Our hope is all the factories remain open.”
Lack of Union Freedom Represses Decent Wages, Work
Government repression against workers seeking to form and join unions has prevented garment workers from achieving the living wages and safe working conditions they have sought to achieve, workers say.
With a new government, garment workers seek a crucial change: The ability to freely exert their internationally recognized freedom to form independent unions and bargain collectively for wages and working conditions.
“We want to be able to exercise our trade union rights to the fullest with no pressure from anybody,” says one union leader, who has received threats for efforts to stand up for worker rights.
Although most factories have resumed production, garment workers say their monthly wage still must be increased.
“Many families live on the income of garment workers,” said the union representative.
While many garment workers received wages in July, union leaders tell Solidarity Center that in many other factories, especially those without unions, workers were not paid. In Gazipur, ready-made garments and textile factories demanded their due payment.
Last fall, garment workers who held protests for higher wages were also brutally repressed. The government raised wages to $113 a month, an amount union leaders say does not cover the cost of living, and about half of what workers sought. Multiple labor organizations, including the Industrial Bangladesh Council and Garments Sramik Parishad, said garment workers’ monthly minimum wage must be at least Tk 23,000 a month ($195.81).
Workers said last year’s wage revision did not cover basic needs as “the prices of daily commodities have skyrocketed.” One garment worker who has been on the job for 15 years said, “Usually, our wage is revised every five years. We expect the new government to do that in three years. It will be really beneficial for garment workers.”
* All workers interviewed for this story asked to remain anonymous.
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.
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.”
