In Eswatini, a landlocked country in southern Africa, union workers are routinely harassed, attacked and even killed for going on strike or holding rallies. In 2021, dozens of workers were killed by security forces in what Amnesty International called “a full-frontal assault on human rights” by the government in response to ongoing pro-democracy protests. In January, prominent human rights lawyer Thulani Maseko was shot dead, hours after a speech by the king warning those calling for democratic reforms that mercenaries would deal with them.
Exiled SWATCAWU leader Sticks Nkambule is receiving support from SCAWU and other unions in Eswatini. Credit: SCAWU
Most recently, Sticks Nkambule, general secretary of the Swaziland Transport, Communication and Allied Workers Union (SWATCAWU), was targeted by the government for leading a strike to improve working conditions. Forced to flee Eswatini, formerly called Swaziland, Nkambule described the interconnected struggle for worker rights, human rights and democracy on the latest Solidarity Center Podcast.
“By bringing together the collective voice of all workers, unions fight for decent working conditions but also for the freedoms fundamental to all democratic societies,” Bader-Blau told Nkambule.
Despite the brutality and repression, Nkambule finds hope in the support from labor and human rights organizations around the world—and in workers themselves.
“What is quite inspiring is that the people of Swaziland are determined to be part of the conversation that is going to change their discourse. It is a reality, activists and, not just labor, beyond labor.”
To address obstacles preventing elimination of gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH) in the world of work, union women and their allies marked International Women’s Day with a public event advocating for ratification of UN International Labor Organization Convention 190 (C190).
Women in Kyrgyzstan are routinely subjected to various forms of discrimination—including unequal pay and lack of opportunities for career advancement—and harassment that includes sexual harassment, verbal abuse and even mockery, said Textile and Light Industry Trade Union Chairman Almash Zharkynbaeva.
“[GBVH] harms women’s mental health and well-being, leading to long-term emotional and psychological trauma,” says Zharkynbaeva.
The event was convened to recognize publication of a March 2 ratification motion that moved the draft law to parliament and, on March 8 International Women’s Day, opened the draft law to public comment on Kyrgyzstan’s draft law public discussion portal.
Publication of the draft law represents a three-year Solidarity Center campaign to educate government officials, labor inspectors, unions and the public on the use of C190 to end violence and harassment in the world of work. The Solidarity Center secured commitments from trade unions and parliamentarians to support the ratification process, advised on language now included in three union bargaining agreements to protect workers from violence and harassment, and coordinated a sectoral union campaign appealing to the Ministry of Labor for ratification of C190.
The convention is a powerful tool to combat discrimination and harassment in the world of work, says Eldiyar Karachalov, chair of the Republican Committee of the Trade Union of Construction and Building Materials Workers, but significant progress will require unwavering commitment from employers, workers and the government.
C190 was adopted during the ILO’s annual meeting in Geneva in 2019 following a decade-long campaign by women trade unionists and feminist activists, led by the International Trade Union Confederation, the Solidarity Center and other labor allies. Since 2019, 25 countries have ratified the convention, of which ten have begun enforcement.
Hear more about the global campaign to end GBVH in the world of work.
App-based drivers worldwide work long hours for often minimum wages while facing safety risks every day—and these issues are compounded for women platform workers, according to speakers at a Commission on the Status of Women (#CSW67) side event, Women Workers Organizing: Transforming the Gig Economy through Collective Action.
“Not just in Colombia, but worldwide, women are always the ones that are the most vulnerable and paid the worst,” said Luz Myriam Fique Cardenas, president of Unión de Trabajadores de Plataformas (UNIDAPP) in Colombia. “We suffer harassment. We don’t have security in the streets because we’re women.”
Cardenas joined three women app-based drivers from Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria and the Philippines who are mobilizing platform workers to form unions and stand up for their rights. The March 7 Solidarity Center panel, spearheaded by the organization’s Equality and Inclusion Department, was co-sponsored by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).
Although most countries have hard-won labor laws in place, app-based workers are among 2 billion informal sector workers with few legal protections. Women platform workers experience sexual harassment and other forms of gender-based violence on the job along with the risks of injuries from traffic accidents, yet the multimillion dollar companies employing them provide no workplace injury or health coverage.
In Nigeria, where one app-based driver is killed each month, “you are your own security. Every trip you go on, you are at risk,” said Ayobami Lawal, an app-based driver, business graduate and mother of three. Earlier this year, Lawal and other drivers in Nigeria won the country’s first union covering platform-based workers, the Amalgamated Union of App-Based Transport Workers of Nigeria (AUATWN). (Nigerian platform drivers’ campaign for rights on the job is highlighted in this Solidarity Center video, part of the panel presentation.)
“Taxi drivers are seen as informal employees and we have no protections whatsoever,” says Gulmayram Batirbekova, a platform taxi driver in Kyrgyzstan. A single mother of five, she has become an active leader in Kabylan, a platform worker union she says is named after an animal “that is fiercely independent, a leader.”
“Our main effort now is to become recognized as employees so we are entitled to all the protections enshrined in the law, to make sure we make enough money for ourselves and our children.” (Kyrgyz platform drivers’ campaign for rights on the job is highlighted in this Solidarity Center video.)
On the Frontlines of a Tech-Driven Revolution
Hearing from each others’ struggles, panel participants noted the similarities of their experiences trying to support themselves while working within an exploitative employment model that updates what panel moderator Emily Paulin called the “grinding nature” of the work in the industrial revolution.
“You are on the front lines of shifting this tech-driven industrial revolution to shift the perspective that working 14,16 or even 18 hours is even remotely appropriate for us in the 21st century,” said Paulin, Solidarity Center senior organizational development and labor education specialist.
While mobilizing to form unions, platform workers also are pushing for legislation and changes to labor laws in their countries, urging lawmakers to ensure app-based workers have the same rights and protections guaranteed by international law for all workers. Some, such as in Nigeria, are filing class-action lawsuits against platform companies for wage theft and other worker abuses—all part of broad-based campaigns to achieve workplace dignity and respect.
Company Calls the Shots—but Doesn’t Call Them ‘Employees’
Throughout their discussion, panelists homed in on two areas: classification of app-based workers as “independent contractors”—meaning platform companies are not required to follow labor laws such as ensuring a minimum wage and providing basic health and safety coverage—and the lack of transparency and unpredictability of algorithm-based employment.
Whether the companies are global, such as Uber or Glovo, or regionally based, like Deliveroo and Yandex, their business models are the same: Maximize profit by moving operating costs onto workers by calling them independent contractors.
Panelists cited a long list of company requirements they must fulfill to keep their jobs—demonstrating the extent to which they are employees of platform companies and not independent contractors. For instance in the Philippines, where Mary Rose Evardone is a delivery driver for GRAB, the company “has denied we work for them, but they have full control on us. First and foremost they can control the fare. Grab can make it higher or lower anytime.
“Wearing a uniform and bag with Grab logo is compulsory—you need to do that to be identified as a Grab rider,” she said, noting that the company deducts the uniform and bag expenses each month from their paychecks.”
Evardone, a union leader and organizer with the United Delivery Riders of the Philippines (RIDERS-SENTRO) and single mother of five, says she was suspended from the app for organizing her co-workers but has been reinstated while waiting for a court decision on her firing. RIDERS-SENTRO has organized workers in four chapters across several Philippines islands.
Said Batirbekova: “They tell us what to do and we must do that but they won’t give us anything in return. For instance, if we reject a fare, we are blacklisted. When they block your account they do not give you the details, they just lock you down. For you to re-open the account and get reinstated is a real struggle.”
“The fact that we are not recognized as employees is the problem.”
An Algorithm Boss
Not only are app-based drivers directed by employers, the “employer” directing them minute-by-minute is an algorithm.
“Companies want to make everyone think, and even the government think, the algorithms are independent. We all know there is someone programming these conditions and this affects us. Why? Because they’re giving us orders constantly through the algorithm,” says Cardenas.
“It affects women because we often have to accept trips to risky areas. They don’t give us the address where we are going. After we accept the trip we realize we are going to a risky area and we have to go or otherwise we will be blocked.”
Cardenas and others described the unrelenting demands of the algorithms that “make all the decisions on our orders, the distance, but us drivers don’t have any opportunities to choose the order or to assign a value to that order. The algorithm decides on temporary or permanent blocks on drivers. These temporary blocks can last hours or days and don’t allow us to work so we can’t generate income.”
Says Lawal: “We have increase in oil prices, it doesn’t change our fare. We have increases food, it doesn’t change our fare.”
But working through their unions, panelists were optimistic they are improving work for all app-based drivers. “I am sure that this union we have now will be able to talk about this so we all can have a good working environment,” said Lawal.
“Without us, they can’t be an app company. Without drivers, the company won’t function.”
Part of the United Nations, the CSW is the main global intergovernmental body exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women. This session’s focus is Innovation and Technological Change Education in the Digital Era for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls.
The Brazilian Ministry of Labor and Employment (MTE) rescued 39 workers, including children, in February from modern slavery in the state of Santa Catarina. Over half of them were Venezuelan migrants who had moved to the state via the government’s Operation Welcome program.
A construction company enticed the workers through social media posts in Venezuela, offering jobs building warehouses and promising good pay, safe work conditions, free housing and meals for the workers and their families. When workers arrived, however, they discovered that their “housing” lacked beds or bathrooms, and they were forced to build their own accommodations, which all of the workers and their families had to share. Meanwhile, none of the workers were provided signed labor documents, which meant they were neither formally hired nor had they access to work benefits.
Around the world, it is not uncommon for migrant workers to be promised decent work for good wages only to find upon arrival to a new country that they have been tricked. Not unlike the rescued Venezuelas, they often face wage theft, unsafe working conditions, abuse and exploitation.
Since 2018, the Solidarity Center in Brazil has worked to connect migrant workers to unions and strengthen collective action. The migration program raises awareness on the specific struggles of the migrant workers, shares best practices and tools with local union partners to increase migrant affiliation, and promotes social dialogue for the development of local public policies on migration through a labor movement perspective.
In recognition of its unique perspective and relationships with partner unions, the Solidarity Center was invited to join a new working group created by the Brazilian Ministry of Justice to discuss and propose a new national migration policy for adoption by the new government. The group held its first meeting March 3.
In partnership with the Center for Human Rights and Immigrant Citizenship (CDHIC) through the SindicAndo project, the migration program led to the 2022 creation of the National Network of Unions for the Protection of the Migrant Worker, which already has more than 80 members among local unions, national trade union centers, federations, confederations and global union federations. The program also supported the General Workers’ Union (UGT) Amazonas branch in the creation of the Venezuelan Association in Amazonas (ASOVEAM), which became an UGT affiliate. As of today, ASOVEAM is the head of the Committee for Migrant and Refugee Policies of Manaus, the capital of Amazonas.
The Solidarity Center, with Brazilian trade union federation CUT’s affiliate, the National Confederation of Construction and Wood Industry Workers (CONTICOM/CUT), is working to strengthen union action and confront and combat precarious work through national awareness-raising and affiliation campaigns in the Combating Precarious Work in the Construction and Wood Sectors. The project has mapped worker rights issues in the sector. According to CONTICOM, workers’ main challenges in the sector are: informal hiring, construction companies not providing personal protective equipment and/or bathrooms, the lack of government inspections of work sites, wage theft and harassment, including gender-based harassment.
Workshop on Labor and Social Rights for migrant workers in Manaus (Source: SindicAndo/CDHIC)
CONTICOM’s capacity building workshop on communication (Source: CONTI)
When teachers in Kosovo went on what ultimately became a five-week strike for better pay and improved classroom resources last autumn, they did so as a last resort, says Rrahman Jasharaj, chair of the teacher’s union, SBSSHK.
“For nine months we tried to negotiate with the government. When the government decides to block the doors and dismiss dialog as a tool for a solution, then there is no other option but striking. And this is very difficult situation for all of us,” Jasharaj said on the latest episode of The Solidarity Center Podcast.
Kosovo teachers waged a five-week strike as a last resort after months of seeking talks with the government. Credit: RTE / RL
With no salary increase for years, “Kosovo teachers can hardly afford their livelihood of their families, and they cannot even manage to pass through from one month to another,” he said.
Jasharaj, who in the late 1990s taught children under heartbreaking conditions during the war, said that while the government indicates it will raise salaries in coming weeks, it has shut out teachers and their unions from salary discussions.
He told Solidarity Center Executive Director and podcast host Shawna Bader-Blau that during the war and again throughout the recent strike, teachers and their unions from around the world, including Education International and the U.S.-based AFT, offered their support and resources.
Ultimately, Jasharaj says, it is essential the government see teachers and their unions as partners in building a first-class education system for Kosovo children.
“We’re trying to establish a mutual cooperation network,” he says. Meanwhile: “My colleagues in all Kosovo schools are currently battling for education only by a chalk, sponge, whiteboard, and lacking basic tools and requisites for conducting the proper teaching process.”
Discrimination, marginalization and powerful political forces like authoritarianism do not stop at a country’s border—and that is why it is so important for black women worldwide connect through their unions and allied organizations, panelists said Thursday at a Solidarity Center-sponsored event.
“We need to strengthen this kind of international unity as a way to strengthen our fight in Brazil. Racism does not manifest only in one society,” said Rosana Fernandes, a leader at the national Central Union of Workers (CUT) in Brazil.
Fernandes spoke at the panel, Black Women’s Power: Advancing Partnership Between Unions and Global Racial Justice Movements, a conversation with union leaders and members of the Black Women’s Roundtable on advancing racial and gender justice through labor movements worldwide. Members of the Black Women’s Roundtable, part of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, were joined by the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU) and the Global African Workers (GAW), along with Sarah McKenzie, Solidarity Center program coordination director.
“The Black Women’s Roundtable seeks the liberation of Black people so they can strengthen the healthy wealthy and wise opportunities for Black women here and around the world,” said Carol Joyner, director of the Labor Project and policy lead at the Black Women’s Roundtable. Members of the Black Women’s Roundtable have engaged in exchange programs with Black women workers in Brazil, Cameroon, Colombia, Ghana, Guinea and Kenya. Elsie Scott, founding director of the Ronald Walters Leadership and Public Policy Center at Howard University and Black Women’s Roundtable member, also took part. Scott is the former president of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.
Panelists engaged in conversation with Solidarity Center staff from around the world, including from Albania, Bangladesh, Brazil, Cambodia, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Kenya, Jordan, Lesotho, Mexico, Morocco, Niigeria, Palestine, Serbia and South Africa. Solidarity Center’s Viviana Osorio Pérez, equality and inclusion director and Hanad Mohamud, program coordination and leadership associate director, moderated the panel.
‘We Have to Unite in Our Struggles’
From CBTU’s founding in 1972, members recognized they needed to connect with Black workers globally, Apollos Baker told the audience. CBTU began by coalition-building alongside unions in South Africa, where workers struggled under brutal apartheid laws.
Baker, special assistant to the New York State AFL-CIO secretary treasurer and CBTU activist, said that now, as union officials around the globe are threatened and attacked for “pressing their countries to be pro-worker, pro-Black,” CBTU and GAW work to ensure they and their families have the support they need. “We have to make sure asylum is available to people,” he said.
Agripina Hurtado, former president of the Afro Colombian Labor Council in Colombia and a GAW member, described her conversations with Black women in Colombia about how racial discrimination impacts them in workplaces, and pointed out that it is important for workers to be aware of international laws and “all the instruments of international justice.”
“We have to unite our struggles, our fights, especially women, who suffer discrimination because of their gender, their color,” she said. “We have to be agents of change to transform our society.”
Uniting Globally to End Racism
Hurtado lifted up the game-changing national election of a progressive slate of candidates in 2022 that includes Francia Márquez, a former housekeeper, union member and Colombia’s first Black vice president.
We now “have a vice president who comes from the neighborhoods, who’s Black, worker, the first African descendant woman” a milestone that shows that “women in particular can get to what we work toward.”
Fernandes also described the difficult conditions Black and Indigenous women face, including lack of access to water in marginalized communities and job discrimination even when they have university educations.
CUT has long tackled racism and discrimination, and recently produced videos in which Black men and women describe how racism impacts their lives. The videos also show alternatives, offering ways to fight racism in society. But “the anti-racist struggle must be international,” Fernandes said.
“This kind of international forum is helping us and strengthening our capacity to fight for workers.”
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