SOLIDARITY CENTER PROMOTING WORKER RIGHTS WORLDWIDE

2018-19 ANNUAL REPORT The is the largest U.S.-based international worker rights organization helping workers attain safe and healthy workplaces, family-supporting wages, dignity on the job and greater equity at work and in their community. Allied with the AFL-CIO, the Solidarity Center assists workers across the globe as, together, they fight discrimination, exploitation and the systems that entrench poverty—to achieve shared prosperity in the global economy.

The Solidarity Center acts on the fundamental principle that working people can, by exercising their right to freedom of association and forming trade unions and democratic worker rights organizations, collectively improve their jobs and workplaces, call on their governments to uphold laws and protect human rights, and be a force for democracy, social justice and inclusive economic development.

Our Mission: Empowering workers to raise their voices for dignity on the job, justice in their communities and greater equality in the global economy.

The Solidarity Center Education Fund is a registered charitable organization tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Contributions are tax-deductible to the extent of applicable laws. A summary of activities from July 2018 to December 2019 and financial highlights for the year ending November 30, 2019, are described in this report.

Editors: Carolyn Butler, Tula Connell, Kate Conradt Design: Deepika Mehta

Copyright by the Solidarity Center 2019 All rights reserved.

ON THE COVER: In her 60s, Etaf Awdi Hamdi Eqdeeh works on farms near Gaza, Palestine, to help support her family. She must visit local farms daily to find temporary jobs. The majority of the world’s workers are informally employed, denying them regular wages, legal protections, sick leave and pensions. Photo: Abed Zaqout FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

IN THESE TURBULENT TIMES FOR to codify a binding rule to end violence the Solidarity Center, and the garment DEMOCRACIES, workers continue to and harassment in the world of work. factory owner signed enforceable and organize for a better world. This year, They helped ensure the realities of binding agreements to create a first-of- we and the global labor movement are women workers remained central to the its-kind program to eradicate GBVH in celebrating several landmark firsts. discussions, and emphasized the need the factories. Importantly, the definition for gender-specific, structural responses of GBVH in the agreements reflects Gender-based violence and harassment— to address the impact of workplace Convention 190 language (See Page 5). on the manufacturing floor, in the violence and harassment. Facing down lunchroom, on transportation to the the opposition, they helped create the Despite rising authoritarianism and factory or field, at an employer’s home first global standard of the #MeToo era: rollbacks of human rights, these two or during bathroom breaks and other ILO Convention 190 (C190) to recognize victories show how cross-border, cross- job-related scenarios—suppress the right of all workers to be free of movement solidarity can effect change women’s voice at work and, like racism violence and harassment at work, in when led by the voices and experiences and discrimination in all its forms, formal and informal settings. Most of women workers. And though miles disenfranchise them from their rights. importantly, the convention defines remain on the road to achieving gender gender-based violence and harassment equality, these successes are powerful The Solidarity Center is proud to have (GBVH) broadly and includes the range of steps toward preventing and addressing supported trade union women leaders abuses experienced by women and other GBVH in our workplaces and overcoming from Brazil, Cambodia, Georgia, vulnerable workers, including but not one of the primary barriers to achieving Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, limited to sexual harassment. economic justice for all. Prithvi Sharujha Kenya, Mexico, Morocco, Nicaragua, and others from the Sri Lanka Eksath Nigeria, Palestine, South Africa, Then August 2019 saw another In Solidarity, Jathika Workers Swaziland, Tunisia and Zimbabwe, important benchmark. Lesotho-based Union shared strategies on how as they participated in negotiations unions and women’s rights groups, unions can end at the United Nations’ International major fashion brands and international gender-based violence at work Labor Organization (ILO) in June 2019 worker rights organizations, including Shawna Bader-Blau, Executive Director during a Solidarity Center training. Photo: Sean Stephen

SOLIDARITY CENTER • 2018-19 ANNUAL REPORT 3 THE TREND TOWARD INCREASING whom a disproportionate number are In Ukraine, domestic workers formed AUTHORITARIANISM AND BARELY women. the country’s first organization for CHECKED CORPORATE POWER, and domestic employees and childcare their confluence, restrict the exercise In Kyrgyzstan, the first-of-its-kind workers in June 2019, to provide of democratic rights and exacerbate Migrant Workers Union formed and information and legal support, improve the gap between the haves and have held its inaugural congress in 2019. wages and working conditions, and nots. Income inequality has widened More than 2,000 workers, who travel advocate for Ukraine to implement the around the world while public wealth for jobs in Russia and elsewhere, joined provisions of the Domestic Workers has transferred to private hands, limiting the union to protect their rights abroad. ILO Convention 189. Because domestic even a willing government’s ability to The Solidarity Center and partner Insan- workers do not yet have formal standing provide services and social safety nets to Leilek have provided pre-departure under current labor law, the Domestic minimize marginalization of its people. training and rights education to migrant Employees’ Union will operate as a workers for the last five years. nongovernmental organization. At the crux of these trends are workers and their ability to earn a fair wage, In another first, thousands of Kenyan And domestic workers in Mexico, who ensure a safe workplace and weigh in informal-sector workers—vendors, in 2015 formed SINACTRAHO, their first on policies that affect their lives. With cleaners, auto-body workers and union and a Solidarity Center partner, WORKER AGENCY & LEADERSHIP partners, the Solidarity Center works to mechanics—won union protection in won landmark labor legislation in May secure freedom of association, collective 2019 following organizing efforts by the 2019 that mandates written contracts, bargaining and enforceable worker Central Organization of Trade Unions- paid vacation and annual bonuses for rights for all workers, everywhere. Kenya, a Solidarity Center partner, and domestic workers. The law also addresses

Domestic workers This includes efforts to reach workers COTU-K affiliates. As union members, child labor, banning children under 15 in Mexico celebrate traditionally excluded from labor law, some 5,600 workers now will be covered from undertaking domestic work, and Senate passage of a law ensuring the such as domestic and migrant workers, by the country’s labor laws, which have limiting work hours for children over 15 labor rights of the and those in the informal economy, of excluded informal workers. years of age. country’s 2 million domestic workers. Photo: Canal del Congreso

4 SOLIDARITY CENTER • 2018-19 ANNUAL REPORT EQUALITY & INCLUSION

THE GLOBAL ECONOMY IS NOT denying thousands of women garment 2018 season when they took grievances WORKING FOR WOMEN AND workers there a safe and dignified public. However, in 2019, the Solidarity MARGINALIZED WORKERS. Entrenched workplace. The agreements are binding Center helped their union, ACOLFUTPRO, cultural norms and political, social and and worker centered, cover five factories engage the national Ombudsman’s Office, economic power structures around the and were negotiated and signed by which filed a constitutional complaint for world disadvantage one group of people Lesothoan unions and women’s groups, gender discrimination against individual to the benefit of another. This manifests Kontoor Brands, Levi Strauss & Co., The soccer clubs and the soccer federation. In in many ways and often targets people Children’s Place, international worker August 2019, Colombia’s Constitutional by gender identity and norms, class, race, rights organizations (the Solidarity Court ruled in favor of the women ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, religion, Center among them) and Nien Hsing players, ordering both the employers and disability or other group identities. Textiles. These pacts include language ACOLFUTPRO to present plans for gender from ILO Convention 190—only adopted equality. In partnership with worker, women and in June 2019, marking another first. human rights advocates around the They cover 10,000 Lesotho garment Members of the National Union of world, the Solidarity Center is working to workers who produce jeans and knitwear Seafarers Sri Lanka in Colombo right the scales and mitigate structural for the global market, establishing a successfully lobbied for a safer workplace oppression, building solidarity and program of mandatory education and by convincing their company to improve supporting worker efforts to change awareness trainings for all employees its code of conduct to help prevent In Bangladesh, the attitudes, working conditions and laws, and managers, an independent reporting gender-based violations on the job. The Solidarity Center with particular emphasis on eradicating and monitoring system, and remedies for effort was inspired by a Solidarity Center partners with the Bangladesh gender-based violence and harassment abusive behavior. awareness-raising training in December Obivashi Mohila in the world of work. 2018 on gender-based violence at work Sramik Association (BOMSA), WARBE Players for women’s professional soccer in which four workers from the South Asia Development Precedent-setting agreements in in Colombia have had to contend with Gateway Terminal (SAGT) took part. Based Foundation and other organizations Lesotho, signed in August 2019, will longstanding gender discrimination, on the workers’ proposal, SAGT introduced to protect migrant comprehensively address the rampant harassment, short-term contracts and a whistleblower policy and released a worker rights. Photo: Istiak gender-based violence and harassment virtual penury—and the cancelling of their separate policy against sexual harassment. Ahmed Inam

SOLIDARITY CENTER • 2018-19 ANNUAL REPORT 5 AROUND THE WORLD LAST YEAR, anniversary of when enslaved Africans people. The congress agreed to their workers and unions pushed back first touched the shores of America. recommendations that women leaders against onerous price hikes, wage theft, During this historic event in Ghana, participate in employer negotiations; corruption, anti-democratic legislation, the NAACP ad-hoc Labor Committee agreements with employers include discrimination and unemployment. along with the Coalition of Black Trade language that explicitly addresses gender- GRASSROOTS ACTIVISM They launched campaigns to educate Unionists (CBTU), Solidarity Center and based violence and harassment at work; working people on their rights. They took the Ghana Trades Union Congress (TUC) and that ITUC-Africa would support to the airwaves or marched in the streets conducted a labor summit to examine affiliates lobbying their governments to to take on abusive supply chains and how past labor practices have current adopt the convention. indifferent or exploitative governments. global impacts, including on migration and supply chains, and to promote cross- In October 2018, the Kyrgyzstan Assaults on worker rights are core to regional networks within the diaspora Federation of Trade Unions (KFTU), attacks on democracy worldwide. to support labor’s ability to address the including unions representing mining Rampant rights abuses in global supply challenges of the future. The American and construction workers, found that laws chains, uncertainty about future jobs in Federation of Teachers, United Auto against child labor in the country were a low-wage world, the erosion of human Workers, United Food and Commercial inadequate and implementation uneven, rights and widening inequality are Workers International Union and SEIU resulting in more than 250,000 children global challenges. The Solidarity Center provided support for the meetings. being subjected to hazardous work. The supports allies, workers and activists federation called on the government trying to create respect and have a say at Some 45 women leaders of unions to monitor child labor, increase legal their workplace, both on the ground and from across Africa—many of whom penalties for violations of child labor laws Sri Lankan tea pluckers—the through grassroots internationalism— campaigned for ILO Convention 190— and educate citizens about the harmful majority women— connecting workers and unions across pushed for their priorities to be adopted effects of child labor. The Solidarity Center who carry tea leaf loads to distant borders and movements. by the International Trade Union provided training for KFTU affiliates on weighing points Confederation-Africa (ITUC-Africa) international labor standards, during in the hot sun are fighting for a living In August 2019, the National Association at its congress in November 2019. which participants developed an action wage. Photo: Sean for the Advancement of Colored People The quadrennial meeting sets labor’s plan for submitting workers’ commentary Stephen (NAACP) commemorated the 400th priorities on behalf of Africa’s working on child labor to the ILO.

6 SOLIDARITY CENTER • 2018-19 ANNUAL REPORT WORKER JUSTICE

ACROSS ALL REGIONS and at an a breakthrough agreement with their At the iconic Angkor Archaeological increasingly alarming pace, worker rights employer, Indupalma, in March 2019 Park in Siem Reap, Cambodia, trash are being denied to greater numbers culminating a dangerous, years-long collectors employed by the contractor of people. More than half of the world’s effort to achieve decent wages and V-Green received a boost in pay in countries limited workers’ ability to safe working conditions. The workers January 2019 after 200 workers waged register unions last year, while 85 percent formed a union and fought to force the weeks-long lunchtime protests for better of countries violated the right to strike. company to sign an accord recognizing wages, safer working conditions and Workers in more than 50 counties faced them as permanent workers, negotiate improved social protections like health violent repression, and union activists a collective bargaining agreement and care. Throughout the workers’ efforts to were murdered in 10 countries. provide health coverage. Workers no achieve justice on the job, the Solidarity longer have to pay for their own tools Center provided the union, an affiliate Unequal power relationships, murky or transport—expenses that often left of the Cambodian Tourism and Service global supply chains and low-wage- them in debt to their employer. Worker Federation (CTSWF), with legal and-no-benefits jobs disguised as and bargaining support. entrepreneurialism, and governments In August 2018, the Constitutional turning deaf ears to social and economic Court of South Africa determined in The Solidarity Center launched the issues facing their communities all a historic ruling that workers placed only global network of union and contribute to the decline in rights. by labor recruiters must be made worker rights lawyers and advocates, permanent after three months at International Lawyers Assisting Workers The Solidarity Center supports partners’ the company where they worked on (ILAW), in December 2018. By uniting efforts to create laws that respect worker temporary status, entitling them to the legal practitioners and scholars, ILAW is 75-year-old rights, rectify inequality, correct broad same pay, benefits and job security increasing effective representation of agricultural worker Jesús disenfranchisement and hold corporations afforded to full-time employees. South workers’ interests across jurisdictions Zavala has spent and governments accountable. Africa’s workers have long argued that and economic sectors; promoting more than 10 years cutting employers use so-called “temporary” the exchange of ideas; and providing sugarcane in El Some 750 subcontracted palm workers workers to avoid the higher cost of a venue to diffuse legal strategies to Salvador to help sustain his family. at Colombia’s largest plantation signed employing permanent workers. benefit interests of workers. Photo: Jonatan Funes

SOLIDARITY CENTER • 2018-19 ANNUAL REPORT 7 INCLUSIVE, CIVIL-SOCIETY workers, has joined forces with women’s that has helped elevate the specific PARTICIPATION in all aspects of rights and LGBTQI organizations to vulnerabilities to gender-based violence public life is the antidote to rising condemn employers’ opposition to and harassment faced by transgender authoritarianism, corporate impunity ending violence and harassment and gender non-conforming workers in and the denial of human rights that at work. Four major unions in the informal economy. erode democracy globally. For workers Guatemala—FESTRAS, CUSG, CGTG to be able to guard their rights and have and UNSITRAGUA—have joined with In Zimbabwe—where most people earn a say in their how their government the Network in Defense of Labor Rights less than $1 a day—union leaders were enacts economic and social policy, in Guatemala to end gender-based beaten, arrested or forced into hiding, the Solidarity Center works to support violence at work. The network also is sent anonymous death threats and unions at the national level and bridge building alliances with LGBTQI and some eventually charged with treason large social movements to address women’s rights organizations to further for planning marches to protest price common struggles, from the grassroots strengthen the campaign for C190’s hikes and a financial transaction tax in to the international stage. passage. The Anti-Union Violence October 2018 and launching a national Network of Honduras has presented cost-of-living strike in January 2019. In Central America and the Caribbean, petitions signed by union leaders and An attempted fact-finding visit by a where employer groups from Costa members to the Honduran government delegation of the ITUC in February 2019 Rica, , El Salvador, and Ministry of Labor advocating for resulted in denial of visas for most of the Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and ratification, and in coalition with unions, delegation and the arrest of ITUC-Africa

BUILDING ENDURING DEMOCRACIES Panama have combined forces to is campaigning for its passage. Also, secretary general by state security. In Wage theft and oppose ILO Convention 190, union the domestic workers’ union federation solidarity, the global labor movement— other economic activists are doubling down on FETRADOMOV in Nicaragua is lobbying including the Solidarity Center—rasied injustices are major factors holding campaigns for ratification of C190 by the government and holding member awareness of the human rights abuses, Zimbabwe back their governments. For example, the trainings around the convention along staged protests at Zimbabwe embassies from a democratic society in which FEASIES federation of El Salvador, with its affiliate, SITRADOTRANS, a around the world and raised money to working people representing maquila and domestic union of transgender domestic workers bail union leaders out of prison. are empowered to advocate for their rights. Photo: Jemal Countess

8 SOLIDARITY CENTER • 2018-19 ANNUAL REPORT WHO WE ARE PUBLICATIONS BOARD OF TRUSTEES SENIOR LEADERSHIP

Chair Shawna Bader-Blau, Executive Director Richard L. Trumka, President, AFL-CIO Hind Cherrouk, Middle East and North Africa Regional Programs Director Secretary Treasurer Kate Conradt, Communications Director Elizabeth Shuler, Secretary-Treasurer, AFL-CIO Al Davidoff, Organizational Development Director Members Tom Egan, Senior Adviser, Trade Union Strengthening Tefere Gebre, Executive Vice-President, AFL-CIO Erika Fagan, Program Quality, Learning and Compliance Deputy Director

Leo W. Gerard, President, United Steel, Paper and Michael Lawrence, Controller Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial Molly McCoy, Policy Director & Service Workers International Union Sarah McKenzie, Program Coordination and Trade Union Strengthening Director Robert Martinez, Jr., President, International Mary Markowicz, Program Quality, Learning and Compliance Director Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) Hanad Mohamud, Africa Regional Program Director

Terrence L. Melvin, Secretary-Treasurer, New York State Joell Molina, Americas Regional Program Director AFL-CIO, and President, Coalition of Black Trade Unionists Quoc-Huy Nguyen, Finance Director

Doug Moore, Executive Director, United Domestic Rudy Porter, Europe and Central Asia Regional Program Director Workers (UDW/AFSCME Local 3930) Robin Runge, Gender Quality and Inclusion Acting Director Tim Ryan, Asia Regional Program Director Art Pulaski, Executive Secretary-Treasurer, California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO Stoniek Staniszewski, Senior Adviser, Information Technology Jeff Vogt, Legal Director Joslyn N. Williams Former President, Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO Darcy Wertz, Operations Director

The Benefits of Collective Bargaining for Women: A Case Study of Morocco [Co-published with the International Center for Research on Women and the Confédération Démocratique du Travail, Morocco]

Faulty Fixes: A Review of Recent Amnesties in the Gulf and Recommendations for Improvement [Co-published with Migrant-Rights.Org]

Freedoms on the Move: The Civic Space of Migrant Workers and Refugees [Co-published with CIVICUS]

The High Cost of Low Wages in Haiti

In Our Own Words: Women Workers Address Gender-Based Violence in Garment Factories in Cambodia

In Our Own Words: Women Workers Address Gender-Based Violence in Garment Factories in Indonesia

The ILO Global Standard to End Violence and Harassment in the World of Work, Including Gender-Based Violence and Harassment: The First Comprehensive Legal Standard

There Is No Work We Haven’t Done: Forced Labor of Public-Sector Employees in Uzbekistan [Co-published with the Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights]

Working for Peace in North-East Nigeria: A Challenge for Nigerian Trade Unions

SOLIDARITY CENTER • 2018-19 ANNUAL REPORT 9 Solidarity Center YEARS ENDED DECEMBER 31, 2018, AND 2017

SUPPORT AND REVENUE 2018 2017

Federal awards $31,870,749 $31,215,180

In-kind contributions for federal awards 1,191,037MIDDLE EAST/ 958,390 NORTH AFRICA (3.3) Other contributions 1,387,153 1,186,213 (unions, foundations, institutional donors, individuals) EUROPE (3.4) Other revenues* (22,582) 484,017

Total support and revenue $34,426,357 $33,843,800 FINANCIALS

* Reflects net appreciation (depreciation) in fair value of investments.

Special thanks to major donors Amalgamated Bank, International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers, Office and Professional Employees International Union and , and to Solidarity Center staff for their generous donations over the last year.

FY 2018 REGIONAL SPENDING ($ in millions)

OTHER PROGRAMS (2)

GLOBAL AFRICA (3) (6.3)

MIDDLE EAST/ NORTH AFRICA (3.5) AMERICAS EUROPE (7) (3.7)

ASIA (8.9)

10 SOLIDARITY CENTER • 2018-19 ANNUAL REPORT IN MEMORIAM

The Solidarity Center lost two respected colleagues, sisters and activists in 2018–19.

Lisa McGowan succumbed to cancer November 24, 2018. A deeply passionate advocate for the marginalized, Lisa channeled boundless energy and true heart into her lifelong campaign for worker rights and the advancement of women. An economist and gender expert with more than 25 years of experience, Lisa worked to give people the tools to shape the development, labor and economic policies that affect them. And she had a profound impact on everyone around her. At the Solidarity Center, she developed and implemented transformational education programs related to women workers’ empowerment and action in the global economy. During 2018, she collaborated across the global labor movement and in conjunction with women’s rights groups to push for ILO Convention 190. Sadly, she did not live to see its adoption.

Lyuba Frenkel, senior program officer for Europe and Central Asia, lost her battle with brain cancer on July 30, 2019. Over Lyuba’s 26-year career with the Solidarity Center, she was instrumental in designing, supporting and monitoring projects that bolstered freedom of association throughout Eastern Europe, and for several years also in Southeast Asia. She built close cooperation with local partners, with a focus on collective bargaining, grievance representation, labor laws, trade union organizing, dispute resolution, migration and worker rights. Throughout her successful career, Lyuba never missed an opportunity to convince workers their lives can be better when they join in a union to fight for their interests together.

They are both deeply missed. 1130 Connecticut Ave., NW Suite 800 Washington, DC 20036

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