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.
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...
After the military overthrew Myanmar’s democratically elected government in February, the country’s garment workers, most of them young women, were the first to stand up to defend their right to a free and peaceful society. Since then, workers have led peaceful...
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This report explores examples of unions making significant change in their approaches to migrant worker organizing and how the Solidarity Center has played a role in shifting union thinking about migrant workers and supporting union engagement and activities. Part one...
A new Solidarity Center study takes a close look at the factors fueling the massive growth of Tunisia’s informal economy, and recommends actions to help shift workers in the precarious informal sector to jobs with health coverage and other social benefits. Download...
This report reviews the literature of efforts throughout the globe by workers who labor outside the formal labor economy of their countries to form or join trade unions as well as unions’ efforts to organize and represent them. This Solidarity Center report is part of...
Cambodia’s nascent independent labor movement and human rights organizations worked to revise a labor law proposed in 2011 that would have significantly rolled back worker rights—and a Solidarity Center report describes how they did it. English (PDF) Arabic (PDF)...
In 2011, Tunisian women helped spur protests and end autocratic regimes in Tunisia and throughout the Arabic-speaking world. Today, a Solidarity Center report finds Tunisian women remain in the forefront of ensuring democratic change in their country during the...