Workers Rally Against Child Labor in Uzbekistan
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Outside the embassy of Uzbekistan today, nearly 100 union members and allies from the Washington, D.C., area rallied to show their support for Uzbek children subjected to child labor. Millions of children, some as young as age 7, could be subjected to long hours of labor in cotton fields this fall.
As young people across the United States have returned to school, children in Uzbekistan are being removed from their classes to pick cotton during the current harvest season. Every year, Uzbek state officials order millions of children, as young as 10 years old, and their teachers to leave school and harvest cotton under hazardous working conditions.
In a statement read on behalf of AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker, Stan Gacek from the AFL-CIO International Affairs Department said forced child labor is in violation of not only international labor standards, but basic decency.
Uzbekistan is the sixth largest producer of cotton in the world, earning over $1 billion yearly, and the cotton picked by Uzbek children is processed into the clothes we buy in the United States. Where does this money go?
Fight Child Labor in Uzbekistan
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As the harvest season for cotton in Uzbekistan begins, 2 million Uzbek children, some as young as six or seven and ranging up to 15, will be forced to spend their days picking cotton instead of attending classes.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Labor Department included cotton from Uzbekistan on a list of goods produced by forced and child labor. Each year during the three-month harvest, Uzbek authorities shut down hundreds of schools, hospitals and public offices. Along with the children, thousands of teachers, doctors and public administrators are forced into the fields.
The International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) has joined with AFT and a broad range of organizations in the United States and Central Asia to call for an end to forced child labor in Uzbekistan. You can act today to stop this shameful practice by signing a petition here.
All supporters who sign the petition by Oct. 2 will have their names put on a special cotton quilt that will be unveiled at a rally in front of the Uzbek embassy in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 14. To get more involved in this action, e-mail volunteer@ilrf.org.
What Drives You to This Dream?
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Earlier this month, Timothy Ryan, Asia/Europe director of the Solidarity Center, traveled to Afghanistan and spoke with Farida Nekzad, managing editor and deputy director of Pajhwok Afghan News and vice president of the South Asia Media Commission. A champion of press freedom and women’s rights in Afghanistan, Nekzad works under tremendous pressure at a time when women journalists in her country are being threatened and killed for their reporting. In this cross-post from the Solidarity Center website, Nekzad shows she is committed to staying in her country and continuing her work.
“What drives you to this dream?” That was the question I asked Farida Nekzad, a courageous woman pursuing her journalism career in an increasingly dangerous Afghanistan. I met Farida in Kabul, where the Solidarity Center was conducting a program with print, TV and radio journalists and their unions. We were trying to pull together disparate media outlets and worker organizations for a common purpose: to establish press clubs in Afghanistan.
The media mirrors the geographic, ethnic and political fragmentation of Afghanistan society and politics. Over the past few years, the Solidarity Center had worked with Afghan union partners and the International Federation of Journalists—which represents 600,000 members worldwide—to find ways to help build a national labor organization.
New Reports Detail Global Child Labor Products and Abuses
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Child labor, says U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, continues to be a serious global “problem in 21st century society” and says the United States “must do everything in our power to end these shameful practices.”
Solis’ comments came with the release earlier this month of three new reports by the Labor Department’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB). The central report is a list of goods believed to have been produced by child or forced labor and it includes 122 products from 58 nations.
The report includes many products companies around the globe use as raw materials for finished products that are purchased by U.S. consumers. They include cotton, sugar cane, tobacco, coffee, rice, cocoa, bricks, garments, carpets, footwear, gold and coal.
Brian Campbell, International Labor Rights Forum director of policy and legal programs, calls the new list:
a critical tool that consumers and businesses can use to identify the sectors where forced and child labor abuses continue…this list helps to focus attention on problematic sectors and the challenge now is to implement business practices that lead to higher labor standards and living and working conditions for workers.
Click here for the report, “2008 List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor.”
Unions Call for Action for a Fairer Global Economy
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The 2009 AFL-CIO Convention is ending today, but the global union movement is keeping its attention focused on Pittsburgh, as world leaders will soon arrive for the G-20 summit. Today, AFL-CIO members expressed solidarity with workers around the world and recognized that we can’t solve the international economic crisis alone.
Convention delegates approved a resolution calling for a coordinated effort by the AFL-CIO and our brothers and sisters around the world to seek international solutions to the challenges facing the world’s workers.
Resolution 9, “A Labor Movement Agenda for a Stronger, Cleaner and More Just Global Economy,” lays out principles to bring together unions across national borders, to counterbalance the power of multinational corporations, encourage international cooperation to recover from the financial crisis and protect the lives and rights of workers around the world.
Taking a Break at the Convention
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When delegates to the AFL-CIO Convention take a break from the serious business on the floor, they’ve had a wide choice of interesting things to do and see in the lobby outside the hall.
The hall outside the David L. Lawrence Convention Center offers balconies overlooking the impressive skyline above the Allegheny River, which runs alongside the David Lawrence Convention Center. Inside, our Union Shop has set up a booth with union-made buttons, T-shirts and books, and the lines of delegates and guests often has been long, as many delegates take advantage of the opportunity to buy a worker-related book or labor pin to take back home after the convention.
Another exhibit that’s drawing a lot of interest is the Union Plus “Tell Your Union Story” booth, where union members are videotaped as they tell how and why they got involved with union activities and what a union means to them. The booth is sponsored by Union Privilege, which provides consumer benefits to members and retirees of participating unions. “We want to help tell the union story,” says Jon Ross, vice president of Union Privilege.
So many people don’t know the union story. We want to help spread the word. Every union member has a story about why they became a union activist or how unions help their community. We wanted to capture that.
Lots to Learn on Solidarity Center Website
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The AFL-CIO Solidarity Center has added a new look to its website that shows the breadth of the center’s efforts to help workers in 60 countries achieve a better life by forming independent trade unions. The site, www.solidaritycenter.org, offers a range of options to learn about the Solidarity Center’s programs, publications and other work.
The site includes an interactive map showing regions of the world in which the center maintains field offices and linking to union news and program updates from each region.
The site follows Solidarity Center’s work on issues such as the global economy, workers’ and human rights, safety and health, migration and human trafficking, organizing and bargaining, gender and equality. It puts a global perspective on news about workers and describes the union exchange programs that allow union members to interact with workers in foreign countries and learn firsthand about the conditions they face in the workplace. It’s also a source for videos of workers around the world struggling to join unions.
Report: The Struggle for Workers’ Rights in Guatemala
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For decades, workers in Guatemala have been unable to fully benefit from the wealth in the country or to share the profits of their own labor. The nation’s 36-year armed conflict, which ended in 1996, involved savage repression of workers and indigenous people.
Although the fighting long has ended, the war generated a climate of corruption, violence and impunity that continues to grow, according to a new report by the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center.
Released today, ”Justice for All: The Struggle for Worker Rights in Guatemala” chronicles the courageous struggle of Guatemala’s workers to build better lives, often against deadly odds. Another report, the “Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights,” released a week ago by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), lists Guatemala as the second most dangerous country for union members in 2008, after Colombia.
June 12: World Day Against Child Labor
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Around the globe, workers and human rights activists are spending World Day Against Child Labor by focusing on this year’s goal: Give Girls a Chance. Of the estimated 218 million children who work worldwide, the International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that 100 million are girls. More than half of those girls work in hazardous jobs in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, domestic services and commercial sexual exploitation.
Workers from Albania to Bangladesh will hold rallies, seminars and exhibits to mark the day and increase awareness of the plight of the world’s children. Click here for a list of events around the world.
The ILO says the global economic crisis could lead to an increase in the number of children, especially girls, who are forced to give up school and go to work to support their families. The ILO’s new report, “Give Girls a Chance: Tackling Child Labor,” found that the combination of poverty and the tendency to place a higher value on the education of male children will result in many families in poor countries taking girls out of school and forcing them to enter the workforce.
AFL-CIO Calls for Release of Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi
The AFL-CIO and the global union movement are demanding that Burma’s military dictatorship immediately free Nobel laureate and democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been detained since last Thursday. She was just six days short of completing her house arrest. She was taken to prison after a U.S. citizen swam a mile across a lake to her home and stayed overnight, which violated the terms of her house arrest.
Aung San Suu Kyi, 63, has been under house arrest for 13 of the past 19 years and reportedly is in poor health and in need of medical care. The military regime has given no indication that it will grant her freedom and just last week denied an appeal made by her lawyer for her release. A few days ago, she was transferred from her home to Insein Prison and threatened with new charges.
Aung San Suu Kyi is the legitimate leader of Burma and a recipient of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize. Her political party, the National League for Democracy, won 82 percent of the parliamentary seats in a national election in 1990, but the military regime refused to cede power.
