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Promoting Worker Rights Worldwide
The Solidarity Center launched the International Lawyers Assisting Workers Network (ILAW) in 2019. In just five years, the small community of labor rights lawyers has grown into a truly global network of more than 1,200 lawyers in over 90 countries who collaborate on research, advocacy, amicus briefs and strategic litigation to advance respect for and protection of worker rights. In honor of the ILAW Network’s 5th anniversary, we are proud to share a few of their many accomplishments.


** DELIVERING JUSTICE FOR BRAZIL MINE WORKERS
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In 2019, a dam owned and operated in Minas Gerais, Brazil, by Vale S.A. — the world’s largest iron ore producer — collapsed. The preventable catastrophe killed 240 workers and 32 community members in a flood of waste, and it contaminated land, rivers and streams for miles. After meeting at ILAW’s founding assembly, attorneys Maximiliano Garcez of Brazil and Ruediger Helm of Germany united and, with support from ILAW’s Strategic Litigation Fund, took on Vale and TÜV Süd, the German company that had certified the dam as safe. In 2021, a Brazil court ordered Vale to pay nearly $26mil to workers’ families. We’re hopeful that litigation against TÜV Süd in Munich will hold the company accountable and deliver justice to the families. Learn more ([link removed]) .


** FIGHTING UNPRECEDENTED EXPLOITATION IN
THE PLATFORM ECONOMY
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Companies around the globe that operate delivery, ride-share and other digital employment platforms routinely treat full-time workers as independent contractors, which in many cases denies workers the right to form a union or bargain collectively. Instead, workers receive low pay with no benefits, social security or safety protections. ILAW researchers track, collect and report on relevant case law and legislation so that litigators and labor law reform advocates have easy access to the strongest arguments and strategies to overcome platform companies’ well-funded attempts to avoid accountability. ILAW has also supported litigation on labor rights on digital platforms in the Republic of Georgia and Nigeria, among others, and legislative reform in Colombia and Ecuador. Learn more ([link removed]) .


** ADVANCING DOMESTIC WORKERS’ RIGHTS
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Our partners, with the support of the Solidarity Center, scored a legal victory in 2020 when South Africa’s constitutional court ruled (Mahlangu v. Minister of Labour) that domestic workers injured on the job are entitled to compensation, and that excluding this class of workers was an act of discrimination because the majority of the country’s domestic workers are women, black and/or immigrants. ILAW leveraged this victory for greater impact. First, ILAW researchers looked for similar discriminatory laws ([link removed]) in nine African countries concerning domestic workers. Now, bolstered by the ILAW Strategic Litigation Fund, Network members in Eswatini, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Zimbabwe are challenging these laws in court using the strategies and lessons learned from South African lawyers in the Mahlangu case.
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