The International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWF) is urging more than 25 Africa-based affiliates to use the results of a new survey documenting the suffering of Africa’s domestic workers and their dependents during the pandemic to lobby their governments for urgent...
The Solidarity Center assists workers in the informal economy, such as market vendors in Zimbabwe, come together to assert their rights and raise living standards. Credit: ZCIEA
Some 2 billion people work in the informal sector as domestic workers, taxi drivers, and street vendors, many of them women workers. Informal economy work now comprises the majority of jobs in many countries and is increasing worldwide. Although informal economy workers can create up to half of a country’s gross national product, most have no access to health care, sick leave or support when they lose their jobs, and they have little power to advocate for living wages and safe and secure work.
The Solidarity Center is part of a broad-based movement in dozens of countries to help workers in the informal economy come together to assert their rights and raise living standards. For instance, three affiliates of the Central Organization of Trade Unions-Kenya (COTU-K), a Solidarity Center partner, signed agreements with informal worker associations to unionize the workers, enabling them to access to the country’s legal protections for formal-sector employees.
Find out more about informal workers gaining power by joining together in unions and worker associations in this Solidarity Center-supported publication, Informal Workers and Collective Action: A Global Perspective.
Podcast: Domestic Workers: Leading, Growing, THRIVING
Domestic workers are among the most invisible workers in the world—yet in Latin America, they are joining together to champion their rights at their workplace and in their communities, says Adriana Paz Ramirez on this week’s episode of The Solidarity Center Podcast....
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...
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When Workers Become Targets: Nigeria
"When Workers Become Targets: Nigeria," is a collection of real-life experiences of workers, particularly women, during the Boko Haram insurgency in Borno State, North-East Nigeria, and how unions whose members suffered the greatest toll played a crucial role in the...
![Annual Report 2017](https://www.solidaritycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Annual-Report-cover.2018.png)
Annual Report 2017
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![Annual Report 2016](https://www.solidaritycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Annual-Report-2017-cover.jpg)
Annual Report 2016
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![Rebuilding Nepal: Creating Good Jobs Amid Reconstruction and Migration](https://www.solidaritycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Nepal-Earthquake-report-cov.jpg)
Rebuilding Nepal: Creating Good Jobs Amid Reconstruction and Migration
This JustJobs and Solidarity Center report asserts that post-earthquake Nepal is at a unique moment when it can leverage the reconstruction process to protect worker rights and ensure that migration out of the country for work is a choice, not a necessity....
![Annual Report 2015](https://www.solidaritycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Annual-Report.2015.cover_.jpg)
Annual Report 2015
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![Workers in Post-Civil War Jaffna](https://www.solidaritycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Sri-Lanka.Jaffna-report.7.16.jpg)
Workers in Post-Civil War Jaffna
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...