Dear John,

This summer, we made a giant step forward in our campaign for equality at work. In June the International Labour Organization passed the Convention on Violence and Harassment in the World of Work. This is a huge victory we have been working towards for years! It is also a phenomenal opportunity to take ILRF’s advocacy for women workers' power to the next level.

Today, on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, please consider making a generous donation to ILRF. Your support will be essential as we seize this moment to challenge the entrenched power imbalances that undermine the rights of women and other vulnerable workers.

Since 2014, ILRF has campaigned for a global standard to prevent workplace violence and harassment and this victory belongs to everyone. We are especially grateful to individual donors like you who have helped us persevere over years of campaigning.

ILRF has exposed violations in global supply chains and spoken out on the ways in which diverse forms of violence and harassment impinge on workers’ ability to have a voice at work. This was crystal clear when I interviewed survivors from the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh, who were beaten across the knees and told they’d lose a month’s pay if they didn’t go into a structurally compromised building. Tragically, these women were ignored.

When we first confronted global brands with our reports on gender-based violence, they said the issue was covered by the non-discrimination clauses in their supplier codes of conduct. Yet our own research and many other surveys – taken among agricultural, apparel, and service workers in the U.S. and abroad – confirmed the continued prevalence of the abuse. It was clear to us that the widespread and unchecked violence and harassment was integral to employers’ strategies to keep wages low and workers quiet.

This summer, several interviewees for our report on safety in Pakistan’s textile and garment industry reported that an unspoken condition of their employment was to put up with their supervisors’ sexual advances and demands. One woman who refused sex with her boss told us she was fired as a result. We’ve heard similar stories from workers organizing in global supply chains, whose struggles we support, from across Asia to Latin America – and, of course, the United States. These are the low-income workers and migrants in precarious, contract work who are the most vulnerable to sexual abuse on the job.

Please donate to help ILRF build on the momentum of the new ILO Convention. We now need to support our grassroots partners’ campaigns for legal reforms locally and demand greater accountability in supply chains globally. We need to drive a paradigm shift that puts building women workers’ power and ability to speak out at the center of change efforts. We hope you'll join us.

In solidarity,

Judy Gearhart
Executive Director

P.S. We’ve set an ambitious goal of 30 new monthly sustainers within the next 30 days. Can we count on you to join today to help us have the reliable support we need throughout the year?

Please consider joining ILRF as a monthly donor to help sustain our ability to stand with labor rights defenders around the world.

This email was sent by the International Labor Rights Forum.
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