The Solidarity Center works with a range of Sri Lankan trade unions and community organizations, assisting workers in the garment, tea and informal sectors to secure a collective voice through unions and improve wages, workplace safety and health, and other fundamental rights on the job, as well as advocate for greater worker voice in the democratic process and society more broadly.
Together with local partners, Solidarity Center conducts training around addressing and preventing sexual harassment and other forms of gender-based violence at work. And, as hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans are being driven from their homes by the economic crisis and lack of decent work, seeking opportunities overseas, the Solidarity Center, unions and migrant rights advocates foster coalition building and champion legislative measures designed to inform and protect workers who leave the country for jobs.
Just outside Sri Lanka’s Bandaranaike International Airport, where more than 2 million tourists start their vacations each year, a different reality unfolds in the Katunayake export processing zone (EPZ). There, thousands of garment workers take their places in...
The 2009 end of Sri Lanka’s civil war was an opportunity for workers to return to the security and protections of the formal economy, which had been destabilized by 26 years of violence. However, a new Solidarity Center survey finds that peace has yet to bring the...
Although Sri Lanka's labor code sets the minimum wage, the maximum number of work hours per day and work days per week, and establishes rules around overtime and benefits, many employers in Jaffna, the country’s northern province, are flaunting the statutes. The vast...