Labor Rights | GlobalPost

Informal economy swallows Latin American workers

John OtisJuly 3, 2012 06:00

GUATEMALA CITY — Without minimum wage, insurance, or retirement plans, many of Guatemala's workers say the economy is using them up and spitting them out.

On Location Video: Cambodia's human rights crackdown

Chris KellyJune 26, 2012 06:01

PHNOM PENH — Police arrested activists fighting the largest mass eviction since Pol Pot emptied the Cambodian capital in 1975.

Tile by tile, Palestinians build Israeli settlements

Rebecca CollardJune 26, 2012 06:01

NILI SETTLEMENT — It’s been called an “occupied economy.” West Bank Arabs are left with increasingly limited options for supporting themselves, the unemployment rate above 30 percent.

In Nicaragua, Sandinista membership a prerequisite for government work

Tim RogersJune 7, 2012 06:02

MANAGUA — It may be wishful thinking — not to mention a touchy political issue in a country with a history of US interventionism — but the 23,439 former state employees and their federation of unions hope to find justice in the Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).

Walker's victory: Fair or not, for unions, hard times bring hard lines

Michael MoranJune 6, 2012 12:58

LONDON — The GOP and the Democrats have each spun the vote to suit their agenda, but the deeper one dives behind the Red-Blue rhetoric, the more the result fits into a global pattern of backlash by debt-laden voters against those who are insulated from the vagaries of the market in a way most can only dream of.

Locked Out: Canadian workers pay heavy price in foreign acquisitions

Bilbo PoynterMay 31, 2012 06:15

LONDON, Ontario — Electro-Motive had employed Londoners to build locomotives for over six decades, but 480 unemployed workers say Caterpillar bought their factory for the technology, never intending to continue operations in Canada.

Slave labor on the rise in Russia

Khristina NarizhnayaMay 27, 2012 08:08

VOLGOGRAD — Russia’s recent economic growth has given rise to slave labor schemes enticing waves of migrant workers from Russia’s poor regions and former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

Egypt's labor movement finds its own strength

Mai Shams El-DinMay 24, 2012 06:00

CAIRO — Although Egypt’s labor movement has been born anew in the days and months since the January 25 uprising, wooing workers from the official government union to a growing network of independent ones, activists are finding an impatient audience these days.

Technically legal, Brazil’s sex workers left out of unionization push

Elizabeth TuttleMay 20, 2012 07:00

RIO DE JANEIRO — While other industries have unionized and steadily built up worker protections, Brazil’s sex workers have been unable to follow suit as they have in other countries where the sex trade has been legalized, plagued by social stigma and strict laws around prostitution.

The mysterious murder of a Bangladeshi labor activist

Maher SattarMay 14, 2012 06:01

DHAKA – His colleagues say Islam's murder was retaliation for standing up for workers, rights in Bangladesh, which has the lowest wages in the world and where a series of factory fires has claimed more than 300 lives in recent years.