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The Justice for Jeyasre Speaking Tour Stops in Los Angeles

In Los Angeles, garment workers like Maria, Elizabeth, and Carlos are earning around $6 an hour. That’s because they’re paid through the piece rate system, where workers earn pennies per garment sewn instead of earning an hourly wage. “These industries are run by millionaires,” Maria from the Garment Workers Center shared on the Los Angeles Justice for Jeyasre Speaking Tour stop, “and they have us enslaved.”

The Justice for Jeyasre Speaking Tour Stops in Tennessee

When Armando helped build a public middle school in Tennessee he expected to get paid for his work. Two years later, he’s still fighting to get the $43,000 owed to him. 

Companies, like the one Armando worked for, often get millions of dollars in government contracts only to turn around and steal workers’ wages. They assumed that, because they’re not from the U.S. and don’t speak English, they won’t be able to fight back. “It’s so corrupt”, Armando said at the speaking tour event, “they keep hiring the same corrupt companies. This will continue if we don’t do anything about it”.

The Justice for Jeyasre Speaking Tour Stops in Chicago

Wale Ogunyemi was killed this summer in an unsafe warehouse outside of Chicago. He was a 42-year old Nigerian immigrant who supported his wife and two daughters from the United States. In that same warehouse, three workers were killed on the job and fifty-one serious injuries have been reported since 2016. 

In the first few minutes of the Justice for Jeyasre speaking tour stop in Chicago, Roberto Clack from Warehouse Workers for Justice shared Wale’s story, how they also had to bury a fellow worker, just months earlier, because of an unsafe workplace.

The Justice for Jeyasre Speaking Tour Stops in Philadelphia

There was an outpouring of support from the local labor unions, worker centers and members of Asian and South Asian diaspora especially Tamils who attended the Philadelphia stop of the #JusticeForJeyasre speaking tour. Participants in the tour stop shared personal experiences with workplace fights from garment shops in Bangladesh to coffee shops in Philadelphia, reflecting on parallel injustices and strategies to build worker power on the job.

The Justice for Jeyasre Speaking Tour Stops in Arizona

Borders are easily crossed by corporate garment brands. They rake in massive profits from suppliers who cheaply produce clothing in countries with low wages, large labor pools, and insufficient worker protections. While borders are open to brands, they hold workers in low wage jobs and, when workers do cross them, provide employers with the potent threat of deportation if workers organize or report abuse like sexual harassment. When the Justice for Jeyasre speaking tour stopped in Arizona on September 23rd, Thivya’s call to build solidarity across and against these borders resonated deeply with those listening.

The Justice for Jeyasre Speaking Tour Stops in Florida

On September 15th, Thivya met with unions and worker center leaders in Florida to discuss gender-based violence and harassment in the work\place.

The meeting was the first stop in Thivya’s virtual speaking tour to cities across the United States in support of the Justice for Jeyasre campaign. Central Florida Jobs with Justice, Dream Defenders, Florida Immigrant Coalition, Florida Policy Institute, Florida Student Power Network, Miami Workers Center, United for Respect, WeCount!, and SEIU 1199 all came out virtually to discuss strategies for organizing against retaliation and gender-based violence and harassment, and to learn about the Justice for Jeyasre campaign.

Indian Union Leader Thivya Rakini Inspires APALA Convention with Lessons of Organizing on Global Supply Chains from the South and Calls for Global Solidarity with Garment Workers in Honor of Jeyasre Kathiravel

Over the weekend,  Indian Union Leader Thivya Rakini, President of the Tamil Nadu Textile and Common Labour Union (TTCU) addressed the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance’s 16th Biennial Convention with the theme Rooted in Legacy: Reimagining a New World Beyond Borders & Across Oceans.  TTCU is a women-led Tamil Nadu based sectoral textile worker union.  

Global Labor Justice-International Labor Rights Forum Mourns the Passing of AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Honors His Legacy Promoting International Labor Solidarity

 
 

WASHINGTON DC — Global Labor Justice-International Labor Rights Forum (GLJ-IRLF), our staff, and our allied unions and community organizations around the globe mourn the loss of AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.
 
As a third-generation miner and son of immigrant parents, President Trumka often publicly called on that experience as he defended important positions for working people and unions in the U.S. and around the world.  

Trade Subcommittee Hearing on the Global Challenged of Forced Labor in Supply Chains: Strengthening Enforcements and Protecting Workers

On Wednesday, July 21st, 2021 GLJ-ILRF’s Executive Director, JJ Rosenbaum testified at the Subcommittee on Trade of the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means’s hearing to discuss innovative approaches to combat forced labor in global supply chains and how the U.S. government can strengthen enforcement & protect workers.

Other expert witnesses included Neha Misra, Global Lead of Migration and Human Trafficking at the Solidarity Center, Charity Ryerson, Executive Director of the Corporate Accountability Lab, Genevieve LeBaron, Professor of Politics at the University of Sheffield, and Brian Lowry, Senior Vice President of Innovation, Regulation, and Trade at the United States Council for International Business.

Decent Work and Central American Immigration

“The difference between staying in Honduras and leaving for the United States is not whether you have a job or not. It’s whether you have decent work,” states Tomás Membreño, President of STAS, the Honduran industrial agricultural workers’ union. He would know. In 2017, after palm oil conglomerate Grupo Jaremar used violence and unlawful firings to break STAS’s organizing efforts in the palm oil plantations, over a hundred would-be union members joined caravans headed north.

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