International Labor Organization

Collective Action to End Gender-Based Violence and Harassment

Koebel.Tiffany.L@dol.gov — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 22:02:39 +0000

Collective Action to End Gender-Based Violence and Harassment

Domestic workers representing 25 union organizations across 15 countries in Latin America participate in a IDWF-Solidarity Center co-sponsored training focused on building leadership skills and developing strategies for healing deeply embedded trauma experienced on the job. Credit: Solidarity Center/Alexis De Simone

This year, the U.S. Department of Labor commemorates the 16 days of activism against gender-based violence by highlighting the vital importance of representative worker organizations in preventing and addressing gender-based violence and harassment at work. The department is committed to uplifting women workers’ leadership and voice. We have seen how authentic engagement among workers, employers and governments results in better jobs with stronger worker protections.

The International Labor Organization Convention on Violence and Harassment, known as C190, exemplifies the power of women workers organizing. C190 — the first global standard that establishes the right of everyone to a world of work free from violence and harassment — is the product of decades of grassroots movement building by women workers globally. Since its adoption in 2019, women workers have promoted its ratification and implementation of its principles.

We are seeing workers expand women’s leadership in trade unions to address gender-based violence and harassment through collective bargaining agreements. For example, concerted efforts to ensure gender parity in leadership structures in the National Confederation of Apparel Workers in Brazil led the union to better understand the issues women workers face in the garment industry. A survey revealed that 70% of women experienced gender-based violence and harassment at work and were also paid less than men. As a result, clauses to address and prevent gender-based violence are entering into collective bargaining agreements across the country. In Guatemala, a 2021 report from the Center for Global Workers’ Rights at Penn State University underscored the difference these agreements make, as 58% of women reported being sexually harassed on the job at non-union banana packing plants compared with 8% at unionized packing plants.

Workers at the unionized banana processing plant, Frutera del Atlántico, in Morales, Guatemala. Credit: Mark Anner

As another powerful example, women workers in India and southern Africa have engaged major global fashion companies supplying from factories to develop enforceable agreements to identify, remedy and prevent gender-based violence and harassment in their supply chains. Known as the Dindigul and Lesotho agreements, respectively, these initiatives draw directly from C190 as well as ILO Conventions 87 and 98 on Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining, and center women’s agency through their trade unions in grievance handling and remediation as well as establish independent monitoring entities.

In the U.S., women workers have used local legislation to address gender-based violence and harassment, including in the hospitality industry. After a 2016 survey by UNITE HERE showed hotel housekeeping workers were experiencing high rates of gender-based violence and harassment at work, such as being groped or assaulted by guests while cleaning rooms alone, women union workers collaborated with the city of Chicago and hotel employers to advocate for legislation that would increase safety. That collective action led to a law requiring hotel employers in Chicago to provide panic buttons to their housekeeping staff. This practice has been implemented in several places throughout the United States, including Seattle.

To raise awareness of successful models that reflect principles from C190, the Women’s Bureau entered into a memorandum of understanding with the ILO Office for the United States and Canada to bring together workers, unions, employers, and state and local government representatives across the country to identify and share effective practices for the prevention and elimination of gender-based violence and harassment.

For example, through Women’s Bureau and ILO convenings with ANEW in Washington, contactors and workers in the construction industry learned about the principles of C190 and shared ideas to prevent violence and harassment in their industry. In 2023, the Women’s Bureau also announced the award of more than $1.5 million in grants to support community organizations to prevent and respond to gender-based violence and harassment in the world of work. These Fostering Access, Rights and Equity grants — the first of their kind in the department — will help survivors and women at high risk for violence and harassment in the workplace by investing in workers centers, like Restaurant Opportunities Center United, where women are organizing for stronger rights and protections and democracy.

As we look to commemorate the fifth anniversary of C190 next year, the Bureau of International Labor Affairs and Women’s Bureau are committed to elevating women workers’ voices and building on effective models to end gender-based violence and harassment at work in the United States and abroad.

Wendy Chun-Hoon is the director of the Women’s Bureau. Follow the Women’s Bureau on Twitter/X at @WB_DOL. Thea Lee is the deputy undersecretary for international affairs. Follow the Bureau of International Labor Affairs on X/Twitter at @ILAB_DOL and on LinkedIn.

Koebel.Tiffany… Wed, 12/06/2023 - 17:02

Thea Lee, Wendy Chun-Hoon

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21st Century Trafficking: Emerging Hotspots for Forced Labor

Koebel.Tiffany.L@dol.gov — Wed, 26 Jul 2023 15:34:03 +0000

21st Century Trafficking: Emerging Hotspots for Forced Labor

Floodwaters surrounding houses in Dhaka, Bangladesh. People in areas impacted by climate change can be more vulnerable to human trafficking and forced labor.

According to the International Labor Organization, 28 million people around the world are trapped in forced labor. Some are compelled to work in dangerous conditions. Many are isolated, held in debt bondage, threatened, or have their passports and documents confiscated, making it nearly impossible to seek help or flee. Many become victims of trafficking because they are in desperate need of economic opportunities or trying to escape difficult life circumstances.

Where is this happening?

In nearly every country and in the supply chains of products and services you encounter daily. Here are three places where you should know that trafficking is occurring.

Palm oil plantations

If you have shopped at a grocery store, chances are you have bought something containing palm oil. Palm oil is an ingredient in countless products we use daily, from makeup and shampoo to baked goods and cooking oils. Palm oil comes from the fruit of the oil palm tree, 85% of which is harvested in Malaysia and Indonesia. Workers on palm plantations, many of whom are migrant workers lured by the false promises of good jobs, are often vulnerable to child labor and forced labor. Children and adults are subjected to dangerous working conditions, sexual violence and excessive work hours to meet steep work quotas. Palm oil from this part of the world – along with the myriad of products made with palm oil – is shipped globally to destinations including China, India and the U.S.

The U.S. Department of Labor is raising awareness about the risk of child labor and forced labor in the supply chains of products containing palm oil. Our latest List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor warns of multiple palm oil products that contain ingredients tainted by labor exploitation, and we’ve made recommendations to both governments and the private sector on how to address these abuses.

Southeast Asia scam call centers

Nearly everyone with a cell phone has received a scam call or text. A friendly voice on the line asks you about your day and begins to pitch you a false investing opportunity, a bogus extended car warranty or a fake trial of a new computer virus protection service. You might not know that these calls and texts are increasingly coming from people in forced labor in Southeast Asia.

There are growing reports of workers from Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam and Indonesia, among others, who are promised good jobs by unscrupulous recruiters, only to find themselves trapped in forced labor in makeshift call centers that are heavily guarded. Their passports are confiscated, and they are forced to work long hours and meet daily targets for successful scams. There are even reports of workers being moved or traded among other illegal call centers in the region.

The U.S. Department of Labor is continuing to monitor these situations in order to more effectively engage with the governments of countries in which such fraud is escalating.

Climate-related trafficking

Wildfires, severe flooding, droughts and heatwaves – the effects of climate change – are increasingly in the headlines. A lesser-known effect of climate change is its connection to human trafficking. When people are forced to leave their homes and abandon their livelihoods as a result of changing weather patterns brought on by climate change, they become more vulnerable to traffickers’ false promises of good jobs.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that 3.3 to 3.6 billion people live in contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate change. They are susceptible to water scarcity, crop loss, infectious disease, malnutrition and damage to infrastructure, all of which can drive migration. The World Bank reports that without urgent climate action, 140 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America could become climate refugees within their own countries by 2050. This would increase the risk of human trafficking.

For many, this is already a reality. The 2022 UN Global Report on Trafficking in Persons noted increases in human trafficking after typhoons in the Philippines, as well as high rates of forced labor in an area of Bangladesh prone to cyclones that have damaged crops and increased poverty.

This is an emerging area of research and programming for our Office of Child Labor, Forced Labor, and Human Trafficking. The Biden-Harris administration is also taking action on climate change, in part by bolstering global climate resilience and accelerating global climate action.

The prevalence of forced labor in 2023 is deeply unsettling. Governments need to strengthen legal protections and step up enforcement efforts, and companies need to do more intensive due diligence to clean their supply chains. Strong, independent, democratic unions and support for the right to collective bargaining make it much harder for forced labor to flourish. You can do your part by becoming informed, holding your elected officials accountable and asking the companies you buy from to support fundamental labor rights throughout their supply chains. We must all work together to end this scourge.

Thea Mei Lee is the deputy undersecretary for international affairs. Follow the Bureau of International Labor Affairs on Twitter at @ILAB_DOL.

Koebel.Tiffany… Wed, 07/26/2023 - 11:34

Thea Lee

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ILAB at 75: A New Era of Global Action on Labor Rights

Koebel.Tiffany.L@dol.gov — Fri, 07 Oct 2022 16:00:00 +0000

ILAB at 75: A New Era of Global Action on Labor Rights

Seventy-five years ago this Monday, Oct. 10, then-President Harry S. Truman created the Office of International Labor Affairs in the U.S. Department of Labor. Back then, the international office was much smaller than the Bureau of International Labor Affairs, or ILAB, is today, but it was founded on the same principle – how workers are treated abroad deeply affects how they live and work here in the United States.

So much has changed since ILAB’s founding: the rise of new technologies and forms of work, the dramatic growth of international trade, the increasingly complex global supply chains that go into producing the goods we use every day.

The Bureau of International Labor Affairs has evolved with the times to strengthen its efforts to protect workers’ rights all over the world. As part of the Biden-Harris administration’s worker-centered trade policy, ILAB is ushering in a new era of global action on labor rights, including the all-important rights to freely choose a union and collectively bargain for better wages and working conditions.

Former Labor Secretary Frances Perkins speaks with delegates to the 1952 ILO conference in Geneva. She helped ensure the U.S., including the Labor Department, played an active role in foreign affairs. Credit: Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University

ILAB works with governments, civil society, unions and business to strengthen global labor standards, enforce labor commitments among trading partners, promote racial and gender equity, and combat international child labor, forced labor, and human trafficking. This is not only the right thing to do, it helps U.S. workers by ensuring they are not competing with exploited labor around the world.

Over the years, ILAB has accomplished a lot, including:

Funding projects to reduce child labor and forced labor globally, contributing to removing more than 86 million children from child labor since 2000.
Playing a pivotal role in the International Labor Organization adopting the Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, the Convention on Workplace Violence and Harassment and the Convention on Decent Work for Domestic Workers.
Negotiating, creating and applying the most advanced trade-based labor rights enforcement tool in U.S. trade policy: the Rapid Response Labor Mechanism of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which has already led to the resolution of five labor rights cases, ensuring that Mexican workers can freely exercise their right to join an independent and democratic union.
Dramatically expanding the global knowledge base on child labor and forced labor, supporting more than 300 surveys on these issues, many of which have led to significant policy changes.
Placing ILAB staff as labor attachés in Mexico, Colombia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and at the U.S. Mission in Geneva to advance ILAB's critical work.
Deepening engagement and collaboration with other governments by sharing best practices on important economic and workplace issues, including apprenticeship, that have positively impacted domestic policies.

And looking to the future, the bureau, under the steadfast leadership of Deputy Undersecretary Thea Lee, is making bold headway on a number of fronts in defense of the rights of workers everywhere.

In Mexico, one of our largest and most important trading partners, ILAB is working with our Mexican partners to positively transform labor relations in the country – moving from a system that too often propped up sham protectionist unions that were in the pockets of employers to truly representative union democracy.

Together with USAID and the State Department, the department has launched the Multilateral Partnership for Organizing, Worker Empowerment, and Rights – or M-POWER – the largest U.S. commitment ever to securing free, independent and democratic trade unions on a global scale. This work is so critical because when workers have a voice in the workplace and can effectively bargain for better wages and working conditions, this empowers them to fight child labor, forced labor, and other egregious labor abuses.

As the world’s largest funder of programs to combat child labor and forced labor around the world, ILAB recognizes the power of knowledge. That includes making sure that governments, companies and consumers have information on where child labor or forced labor might be found in global supply chains. And that’s why our Office of Child Labor, Forced Labor and Human Trafficking is working with an expanded mandate this year – to track not only the goods produced with child labor or forced labor, but also goods that use inputs produced with child labor or forced labor. Did you know, for example, that the batteries that power our cell phones and electric vehicles often use cobalt produced with child labor in the Democratic Republic of the Congo? By knowing more, we can do more to effect change across the supply chain.

The world has certainly changed since 1947. And while the focus of our Bureau of International Labor Affairs has never wavered, its strategies and tactics have necessarily evolved. I am proud of the innovative work ILAB does, and will continue to do, to lift up workers’ rights worldwide.

Marty Walsh is the U.S. Secretary of Labor. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @SecMartyWalsh.

Koebel.Tiffany… Fri, 10/07/2022 - 12:00

Secretary Marty Walsh

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Empowering Workers Abroad: The Faces Behind the Work

Koebel.Tiffany.L@dol.gov — Fri, 17 Dec 2021 13:41:38 +0000

Empowering Workers Abroad: The Faces Behind the Work

For decades now, our Bureau of International Labor Affairs has focused on improving the lives of workers through our programming and policy work around the world. In that time, we and our grantees have sought to show the human face of labor – not as a cold input in production, but as part of the lived experience of workers worldwide.

For the past 27 years, a U.S. Department of Labor grantee, Escuela Nacional Sindical (the National Union School) in Colombia, has held a photo contest in Latin America to show the human faces of labor in the region. Over the years, they’ve amassed a stunning collection of portraits that convey the lived experiences and diversity of workers. We wanted to share a few of these portraits with you, while also outlining what ILAB is doing to lift up workers’ rights today and moving forward.

Advancing equity

Javier Arcenillas-Ángela - ESPAÑA, 2020 (Photo taken in Colombia)

Cristian Nicollier - Proyecto 3M – ARGENTINA, 2020 (Photo taken in Colombia)

These are two of many in a collection of portraits of women at work. ILAB is committed to ensuring workers are treated equitably and that their rights in the workplace are respected regardless of gender, race, LGBTQ+ status or disability.

Whether it’s in multilateral forums or through bilateral exchanges, ILAB is advocating for equity in the workplace worldwide. We are supporting efforts by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the International Labor Organization and G20 to increase respect for the labor rights and employment of persons with disabilities.

We are also helping implement President Biden’s Memorandum on Advancing the Human Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Persons Around the World, which includes engaging with the business community and multilateral organizations.

As part of our engagement with the business community to advance LGBTQ+ rights in the world of work, ILAB Associate Deputy Undersecretary Mark Mittelhauser recently spoke at a breakout session of the annual Out and Equal Summit to discuss our efforts to advance LGBTQ+ rights and learn from others’ efforts. This session included a representative from the Brazilian government’s labor prosecution office, which enforces LGBTQ+ persons’ labor rights, and a representative from a French NGO, L’Autre Cerle, which promotes LGBTQ+ inclusion in the workplace.

We also worked with the department’s Office of Disability Employment Policy and the U.S. Embassy in Montevideo, Uruguay, to coordinate a two-part webinar on engaging employers to promote the recruitment, hiring, retention and advancement of people with disabilities.

In Mexico, the department will soon announce the award of a $10 million project to increase the number of women in union leadership, strengthen protections, increase wages for women and reduce workplace gender discrimination and harassment.

Enforcing the labor provisions of our trade agreements more proactively and strategically than ever before will allow us to support our trade partners in their efforts to create equitable workplaces, while also building workers’ voice and power – including through the formation of independent and democratic unions. To that end, we recently launched a major multilateral initiative to support worker organizing and workplace democracy worldwide.

Ending child labor

Esteban Vega La-Rotta - Niños trabajadores - COLOMBIA, 2017

Andrés Giovanni Rozo Samer- Niña Tejedora Wounaan - COLOMBIA, 2018

These photos depict the plight of child laborers the world over. Some 160 million children worldwide toil in child labor, 8.2 million in Latin America and the Caribbean. We're working to reduce poverty and child labor both in the region and worldwide.

Today, we have nearly $80 million in active programming to reduce child labor in Latin America and the Caribbean. One example, the Pilares project in Colombia, is supporting civil society organizations to more effectively detect and combat child labor and unacceptable working conditions in artisanal mines. Pilares forms networks of civil society organizations and empowers local communities to build grassroots movements. Collectively, these networks are improving working conditions and reducing the risk that children will be used in this harmful work.

We’re also building our capacity for supply chain tracing in 2022, when we will, for the first time, enable the downstream tracing of goods in our biannual List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor – a move we hope will increase corporate accountability for forced or child labor in global supply chains.

Improving protections for agricultural workers

Hans Filipo Cortés González- Todo nace aquí – COLOMBIA, 2020

Daniel Ricardo López Gutiérrez – Cacaotera - COLOMBIA, 2018

These photos offer a window into agricultural labor. Because much of agricultural work is in the informal sector, there are often scant protections against violations like forced labor, child labor, and unsafe and unhealthy workplaces. ILAB is working to change that through its programming in the agricultural sector.

In Mexico, for example, we will soon award two grants worth $12 million to combat child and forced labor in the tomato and chile pepper sectors. One project seeks to empower workers to advocate for eliminating forced labor and child labor in agriculture by increasing the use of worker protection mechanisms such as complaint channels in the Mexican states of Baja California, Baja California Sur and Chihuahua. The other project works with the private sector to combat labor abuses in Mexico’s tomato and chile pepper sectors’ supply chains.

Supporting labor rights in the palm oil sector

Juan Pablo Marín García - Cosecha de mujeres 2 - COLOMBIA, 2018

Juan Pablo Marín García - Cosecha de mujeres 5 - COLOMBIA, 2018

These photos highlight the palm oil sector in Colombia – one of five priority sectors identified in a Labor Action Plan associated with our free trade agreement with Colombia. Improving labor law compliance in these sectors (palm oil, sugarcane, cut flowers, mining and ports) remains an important priority under our trade policy engagement. Our ENS program operates in all five sectors by establishing Workers’ Rights Centers to provide counseling, legal consultation and training to workers and workers’ organizations. These centers help workers to better understand and exercise their rights in the workplace, and this in turn helps Colombia meet its commitments to the U.S.

We have another project in the palm oil sector in Colombia and Ecuador, Palma Futuro, which strengthens social compliance systems that promote acceptable conditions of work and address child and forced labor in palm oil supply chains. We are proud of our work in this sector, as palm oil is a key input in a number of globally traded goods – from cosmetics to foods to biofuels.

The Department of Labor is focused on empowering workers morning, noon and night. This means ensuring that workers, both at home and abroad, are protected and have opportunities for advancement and a voice. As ENS’s photos show, the world of work is vast – and there is much at stake in protecting workers’ rights both in Latin America and around the world.

To learn more about our programming abroad, visit our projects page.

Thea Mei Lee is the deputy undersecretary for international affairs. Follow ILAB on Twitter at @ILAB_DOL.

Koebel.Tiffany… Fri, 12/17/2021 - 08:41

Thea Lee

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