More than 40,000 garment workers in Honduras are now covered by collective bargaining agreements following long-time Solidarity Center support for organizing. Credit: Solidarity Center/Molly McCoy
Unions promote a higher level of economic equality in societies and are a fundamental element of a free and democratic society. Freedom of association—workers’ right to form and join unions and pursue a voice on the job and in their communities—is the foundation for worker rights.
The Solidarity Center trains union organizers and provides support for unions around the world. We support organizing campaigns, educate workers about their legal right to form a union and promote strong labor laws.
The Solidarity Center works directly on the ground with workers to form unions and win collective bargaining agreements. For instance, in Cambodia, 8,000 hotel and casino workers at Nagaworld casino won large wage increases and reinstatement of their dismissed union president following Solidarity Center union organizing support and legal assistance. And in Honduras, long-time Solidarity Center support for organizing has resulted in more than 40,000 garment workers, mostly women, now covered by collective bargaining agreements.
Read the “Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Association” report presented in 2016 to the United Nations.
Where unions establish collective bargaining, they initiate the strongest mechanism for protecting agricultural workers’ rights, health and dignity according to a new report prepared for the Solidarity Center by researchers at Penn State’s Center for Global Workers’...
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, son of a U.S. coal miner and leader of the largest and most powerful organization of working people in the United States, believed strongly in the strength of global solidarity and stood staunchly with workers around the world. His...
In Honduras, where union leaders are targeted with violence and even murdered for trying to form unions and improve workers’ lives, Darlin Oviedo, president of the apparel union SITRAJASPER (the Union of Workers of the Jasper Company), recognized the signs that he...
Wage theft is widespread throughout the the public- and private-sectors, with Zimbabweans working months without a paycheck. Based on surveys at 442 companies, the report documents the vast scope of wage theft; outlines the responsibilities of the state under...
Convening experts from the AFL-CIO, the Rutgers University Center for Women’s Global Leadership and the Solidarity Center, this report examines how to shift governments' policy priorities, create an enabling environment for social organizing and transform women’s...
Unions are key drivers advancing gender equality. Yet in many countries around the world, there is a disconnect between labor union policy and practice in transforming gender inequalities within trade unions. Through the lens of the South African union movement, this...
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This paper investigates the intersection of labor migration and the inclusive growth agenda, and seeks to recommend policies so governments of origin countries can, in part, expand labor migration’s positive impacts by making migrant workers agents in promoting and...
Fordham University law professor Jennifer Gordon examines the roles of guest workers as organizers, monitors and policy-setters in supply chain initiatives and other efforts to address labor recruitment violations. Download here.