11 Facts About Labor Rights

1. While increased access to employment has provided new economic and social opportunities for poor women around the world, the jobs they occupy remain unregulated and unstable.
2. Women work – on average and across the world – more hours than men each week, but their work is often unpaid and unaccounted for.
3. There is no country in the world where women’s wages are equal to those of men.
4. Sexual harassment in the workplace, and workplace-related sexual violence, is a particularly blatant and widespread form of discrimination against women.
5. Forced sexual relations and pregnancy tests, which become a pre-condition for employment, significantly reduce a woman’s ability to demand a living wage and break out of poverty.
6. An estimated 211 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 are working around the world according to the International Labor Organization.
7. 120 million of these children are working full time to help support their impoverished families.
8. When children have to work, they have little access to education. As a result, eliminating incentives for children to work is a key component of getting them into school.
9. Most of the everyday products Americans buy, wear, and eat are produced with labor from the developing world, including such remote countries as Laos and Madagascar.
10. The right to union organize is protected by several international legal documents but members of trade unions are targets of government and paramilitary violence.
11. In 2006 alone, 144 trade unionists were murdered for defending workers’ rights while 800 were victims of violent assaults and 9,000 were fired for their involvement in union organizing.

Sources:

UNICEF

Gender Diversities and Technology Institute

International Labor Rights Forum