SOLIDARITY CENTER PROMOTING WORKER RIGHTS WORLDWIDE 2018-19 ANNUAL REPORT The Solidarity Center 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