Blog

No Más! Campaign Calls for Chilean Government to Protect Human Rights

Since last October, sparked by a hike in public transportation fares, a broad alliance of Chile's unions and other social movements have been protesting against low wages, the high cost of basic necessities and persistently high social inequality. The country's extreme model of privatization of most public services and basic programs in health, social security and education has guided most public policy since the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990). Since October, the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT), Chile's largest labor organization has convened three general strikes, the largest of which brought over a million people into the streets. 
Blog

Colombian Workers Launch General Strike

Colombia's workers, students, and rural, indigenous and Afro-descendant communities will join together in a national general strike tomorrow, November 21. Unlike the strikes many U.S. workers have participated in increasingly in the last five years, Colombians are not striking against any single employer or industry.
Blog

Imagine a President Uniting People

Imagine a president lifting 40 million citizens out of the poverty he had come from. Imagine a president making it easier for people who had been excluded from their nation’s wealth to get decent jobs, basic public services, college education or technical training. Imagine a president uplifting his country on the world stage as a model for shared prosperity and an economy that works for working people regardless of their race. Imagine that president leaving office after two terms with an approval rating over 80%. Where do you imagine that president should be nine years after leaving office?
Blog

Brazilian and U.S. Workers Confronting Common Threat Build Solidarity in the Global Labor Movement

This week the AFL-CIO joins much of the global labor movement in Brazil to participate in the 13th Congress of Brazil's largest labor organization, the Central Unica dos Trabalhadores (CUT). Fred Redmond, AFL-CIO vice president and United Steelworkers vice president for human affairs, is leading the AFL-CIO delegation.
Blog

What Happens When Call Center Jobs Are Shipped Abroad and Workers Try to Organize?

One of the world's largest "contact center" companies in the world, U.S.-based giant Alorica, has been expanding in the Philippines where over 1.3 million women and men work in the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector. These workers and their allies come together through BIEN, the BPO Industry Employees Network, to defend workers interests in this booming sector. Alorica, a global player in this industry, offers "customer experience" services to the U.S. market for clients like Comcast, AT&T, Citibank, Barclays and Caesars.  
Blog

The U.S. Needs to Do More to Protect Basic Labor Rights in Honduras

On Oct. 15, 2018 the United States Department of Labor issued a “progress” report on the Honduran government’s implementation of an action plan (MAP) negotiated between the parties in 2015. The MAP was developed in response to a complaint filed by the AFL-CIO, Honduran unions and Honduran nongovernmental organizations under the Central American Free Trade Agreement’s (CAFTA) labor chapter in 2012, which included cases concerning child labor, illegally low pay and denial of the right to organize and to bargain. The U.S. government had found that nearly every claim in the petition was supported by the evidence and that the Honduran government had in fact routinely failed to enforce its laws.