Media Highlights

Through the #MeToo movement, we have seen how gender-based violence and harassment can happen at any workplace. Unions provide a means by which working people most impacted by GBV can have a say in developing solutions that address such deeply-rooted problems, writes the Solidarity Center’s Robin Runge.

In the months-long assault on Bangladesh garment workers protesting poverty wages that began in December women have borne the brunt of the retaliation. And it is increasingly evident that gender-based harassment and violence is the weapon of choice to target worker rights activists in Bangladesh, writes the Solidarity Center’s Monika Hartsel.

Shawna Bader-Blau, director of the advocacy group Solidarity Center, testified to Congress in November that, in Saudi Arabia, “virtually the entire migrant low-wage workforce is in some spectrum of trafficking.”

“The sackings send a chilling message,” said William Conklin, Cambodia country director for the Solidarity Center, a U.S.-based charity promoting labor rights. “But these factory workers are very brave people. In the face of intimidation and harassment from employers and management, they will continue to assert themselves.”

“There have been major strides in eliminating child labor” in factories, said William Conklin, Cambodia country director for the Solidarity Center, a U.S.-based nonprofit promoting workers rights. “But what it doesn’t address is the issue in the subcontract area. That is a big, unknown area in Cambodia.”

A minimum wage has been invaluable for big pools of unskilled workers, said David Welsh, a Southeast Asia country director for labor rights group Solidarity Center. “Any elevation of wages benefits workers. Remove minimum wages from the policy equation and you have a recipe for disaster.”

“[W]hen faced with authoritarian regimes or institutions that deny people their basic rights, unions and other civil society organizations face a choice: Step up, form coalitions and build true economic and political freedom. Or, appease the ruling elite which will, eventually, work to destroy the labor movement,” writes the Solidarity Center’s executive director, Shawna Bader-Blau.

Anti-slavery certification schemes, accolades and awards are hardly reliable indicators for the public when choosing between companies, according to Neha Mira, a trafficking expert with the U.S.-based workers’ rights charity Solidarity Center. “The same time as you’re giving a gold star to a company, they’re firing workers for trying to organize in the workplace … or women for getting pregnant at work,” she said.

Unions, employers and governments are recognizing that eradicating gender-based violence at work is necessary to achieve the safe and dignified workplaces we all want and deserve. We need to ensure that women’s voices remain at the center of these efforts to avoid repeating what we have already seen—laws, policies and enforcement that have been ineffective and have allowed the women to be targets, writes the Solidarity Center’s Robin Runge.