When Fauzia Muthoni arrived in Qatar from Kenya to work as a receptionist and earn money to support her family, the labor agent traveling with her informed Muthoni the job was in Saudi Arabia and escorted her to another plane. She tried calling her family, but...
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Forum Opens on Promoting Women Workers’ Rights
To promote the rights of women workers, especially women domestic workers and women farm workers, it is essential to seek solutions to build women's capacity to defend their rights to equality, decent work and an end to violence and abuse, according to Hind Cherrouk,...
Book Launch: Informal Workers and Collective Action
As the number of workers in the informal economy increase around the world, the result is that more and more workers are low paid, with few or no social benefits or job security. In the Dominican Republic, where many in the informal economy are Haitian migrants, the...
Victory for Kenya Domestic Workers Migrating for Jobs
Kenyans going abroad to work as domestic workers will be required to have contracts, salaries and details of their work assignments before they leave, according to the (Kenya) Daily Nation. The draft policy, crafted by the Labor Ministry and the Kenya Union of...
Migrant Domestic Worker in South Africa Improves Working Conditions with Union
Prexedes, a domestic worker from Zimbabwe in South Africa, says migrant workers in South Africa often are paid lower wages and suffer harsher working conditions than their South African counterparts. But after joining a union, Prexedes says she has a better salary,...
Migrant Domestic Worker in South Africa: Better Conditions with Union
Prexedes, a domestic worker from Zimbabwe in South Africa, says migrant workers in South Africa often are paid lower wages and suffer harsher working conditions than their South African counterparts. Supporting her three children on her own, Prexedes struggled to pay...
Hundreds Join Migrant Worker Forum in Mombasa
Some 200 people from the Kisauni neighborhood in Mombasa, Kenya, took part in a forum on migrant worker rights Saturday, where those who had gone abroad for work described the harsh conditions they endured and how the labor brokers who signed them up often lied about...
Kenya Domestic Workers Find Hope with Union
Like many women in Mombasa, Kenya, Alice Mwadzi says for years she barely eked out a living. A lack of jobs in the port city for many means a constant struggle to survive—selling fruit on busy highways or hauling carts stacked with heavy water containers through...
Cambodia’s Domestic Workers Demand Recognition
Lack of job protections, combined with the invisibility of their work, means many domestic workers toil long hours in unsafe conditions without a minimum wage or access to health care, sick leave or pensions. In Cambodia, domestic workers, who are not recognized as...
Rosalie: A Champion for Migrant Domestic Worker Rights
Workers who migrate to other countries for jobs often do not know their rights when they arrive, and many, like domestic workers, toil in isolation, where they are easily exploited by employers. Rosalie Ewengue, a domestic worker in Morocco from the Democratic...
Rosalie, Domestic Worker from DRC, Champions Migrant Worker Rights in Morocco
Hi, I am Rosalie Ewengue, I am Congolese. I have worked as a domestic worker in Morocco for eight years, and have been an undocumented migrant worker for six years. I participated in an awareness-raising campaign with the Afrique Culture Maroc and Solidarity Center...
Workers Rights Are Human Rights: Working People Exercise Freedom of Association
In recent decades, the global economy has grown rapidly. But as global production has increased, so too has global inequality. Inequality has skyrocketed. Many governments have prioritized the interests of multinational corporations over those of workers–including...
Solidarity Center Backs Migrant Workers, Refugees
The toxic spread of xenophobia, racism, misogyny and fear marginalizes millions of migrant workers and refugees—further disenfranchising people whose jobs do not lift them from poverty, afford them safe workplaces or uphold their dignity. The Solidarity Center is...
Migrant Workers in Africa: In Their Own Voices
Some 34 million Africans are migrants, and the majority are workers moving across borders to search for decent work—jobs that pay a living wage, offer safe working conditions and fair treatment. Yet even as they often leave their families in search of jobs that will...
Women Nearly Half of Labor Migrants in Africa
An estimated 998,000 African migrants entered South Africa between 2011 and 2015, says Mondli Hlatshwayo, coordinator with the Center for Education Rights and Transformation at the University of Johannesburg, where he researches community and trade union education,...
Rights Groups Decry Detention of Nepali Domestic Workers
Some two dozen human rights organizations are condemning the detention of two Nepali domestic workers in Lebanon, one of whom was deported. Sushila Rana and Roja Maya Limbu were detained “without formal and clear explanation of the charges levelled against them,”...
Migrant Workers Must Have Full Rights as All Workers
Solidarity Center Senior Specialist for Migration and Human Trafficking Neha Misra took part in a Facebook Live event today to shine a spotlight on the promotion and protection of the rights of migrant workers. The event, held in advance of the International Migrants...
Rowena Borja: ‘I Want to Fight for My Co-Workers’
Like many migrant workers, Filipinos seeking domestic work in other countries must pay large fees to labor brokers to get a job--a situation that leads to human trafficking, says Rowena Borja. A domestic worker in Hong Kong originally from the Philippines, Borja is...
Domestic Workers See Gains, yet Struggle for Decent Work
Some 70 countries around the world have taken action to advance decent work for domestic workers in the five years since the International Labor Organization (ILO) adopted Convention 189, the standard covering domestic worker rights. The ILO passed Convention 189 on...
Migrant Workers Empowered by Forming Unions
“Organizing campaigns that are led by migrant workers themselves are making the impossible possible,” says Tefere Gebre, AFL-CIO executive vice president, succinctly summing up the discussion that opened the second day of the conference Labor Migration: Who Benefits?...