Women working in South African mines “at times confront danger, violence and indignity in their work environments,” where gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH) appears both widespread and normalized, according to a new report from the Solidarity Center and South...
The Solidarity Center supported the development of the Afro-Colombian Labor Council, the first national organization in Colombia dedicated to improving the working conditions of Afro-descendants. Credit: Solidarity Center/Rhett Doumitt
The Solidarity Center engages with unions and their allies through an analysis and practice of equality, radical inclusion and intersectionality that is explicitly feminist, anti-racist, pro-equality, pro-worker, pro-migrant and class conscious.
The Solidarity Center designs and implements strategies to confront the multiple and intersecting forms of oppression that contribute to economic structures in which women and other groups of workers are devalued and excluded from economic and social equality. This requires a conscious effort to examine how oppressive forces play out throughout the global labor movement with a commitment to dismantle these systems. Explicit in this work is the understanding that the agency and leadership of the most marginalized workers are key components of decent work and economic justice for all.
The Solidarity Center has assisted unions and their allies in countries such as Cambodia, Colombia, Georgia, Honduras, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Morocco, Nigeria, Nicaragua, South Africa and Tunisia to ensure meaningful participation of historically excluded and marginalized workers in unions and other democratic structures.
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In Morocco, the Solidarity Center supported a multi-year effort to build women worker power and gender equality which led to the inclusion of women workers during negotiations for the first collective bargaining agreement in the informal agriculture sector. In Colombia, the Solidarity Center supported the development of the first national organization dedicated to improving the working conditions of Afro-Colombians.
In Kyrgyzstan, Morocco and Tunisia, Solidarity Center is assisting in strengthening union efforts to promote inclusion of individuals with disabilities. In Nicaragua, Solidarity Center supports domestic workers as they address inclusion of LGBTQI union members to ensure they can represent themselves, articulate their priorities and increase their leadership opportunities and visibility.
The Solidarity Center:
- Conducts research and awareness-raising to challenge systems of oppression and inform inclusive approaches to building worker power across social identities at all levels
- Supports representative, inclusive leadership in our partner organizations
- Engages in cross-movement work to combat tools of oppression that impact women, including gender-based violence and harassment at work
- Brings together unions and community groups to identify shared socioeconomic struggles, analyzes how those struggles are linked to systemic racism and implements organizing, legal and advocacy strategies to collectively overcome the oppression that entraps workers in poverty
- Advocates for economic policies that uproot systemic discrimination and exploitation in labor markets.
Podcast: LGBTQ+ Domestic Workers Win Rights with Their Union
As a trans domestic worker from Nicaragua working in Guatemala, Francia Blanco says her experiences with verbal and physical abuse, discrimination, and forced labor conditions led her to take action to build a world where trans domestic workers had rights, respect and...
Union Women Launch Global Petition to End Gender-Based Violence
Union women and Solidarity Center partners from the Middle East and North Africa spearheaded a petition calling for governments to ratify International Labor Organization Convention 190, the landmark global labor standard adopted in June 2019 to eliminate violence and...
![International Labor Migration: Re-regulating the Private Power of Labor Brokers (2015)](https://www.solidaritycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Migration.Reregulating-the-Power-of-Labor-Brokers.jpg)
International Labor Migration: Re-regulating the Private Power of Labor Brokers (2015)
In this review of initiatives to regulate labor brokers, the authors find that state and civil society efforts to address migrant worker exploitation point to potential new policies, most effectively led by state-backed regulatory frameworks. Download here.
![Irreconciliable Differences? Pursuing the Capabilities Approach within the Global Governance of Migration (2014)](https://www.solidaritycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Migration.Cababilities-Approach-in-Global-Governance-of-Migration.jpg)
Irreconciliable Differences? Pursuing the Capabilities Approach within the Global Governance of Migration (2014)
This report on global labor migration challenges the current “triple win” paradigm in global migration policy through a worker rights lens, and argues that when applying the now-accepted "capabilities" approach, the international development community must focus on...
![Solidarity Center 2013 Annual Report](https://www.solidaritycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Annual-Report-2013-cover.jpg)
Solidarity Center 2013 Annual Report
Download here.
![Africa Trade Unions and Africa’s Future: Strategic Choices in a Changing World (2014)](https://www.solidaritycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Africa_Strategic-Choices-report.jpg)
Africa Trade Unions and Africa’s Future: Strategic Choices in a Changing World (2014)
Download here.
![Exploiting Chinese Interns as Unprotected Industrial Labor (June 2014)](https://www.solidaritycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Asia-Pacific-Journal-cover_6_14.jpg)
Exploiting Chinese Interns as Unprotected Industrial Labor (June 2014)
Earl V. Brown, Jr. & Kyle A. deCant Solidarity Center Labor and Employment Counsel Earl Brown and co-author Kyle deCant examine the legal issues surrounding the growing numbers of China's industrial interns, the latest class of “cheap” labor to be deployed in...
![NIGERIA: Empowering Women, Transforming Society (2014)](https://www.solidaritycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Nigeria_cover.jpg)
NIGERIA: Empowering Women, Transforming Society (2014)
A unique grassroots coalition based in the Niger Delta, working with unions and other local non-governmental organizations, is providing a platform for women and young people to effectively engage in the democratic political process, hold local lawmakers accountable...