The struggle to guarantee basic, human rights for domestic workers is crucial to guaranteeing access to just and decent working conditions for all essential to achieving gender equality in the workplace, fundamental to working towards the recognition of migrant worker’s rights, and a critical step towards the abolition of child-labor. Dominican labor unions, working with domestic workers since 2008, have achieved what was before considered impossible. Today, domestic work is beginning to be treated as legitimate work not only by Dominican labor unions, but also by mainstream Dominican media outlets, and, perhaps most importantly, the workers themselves, who are increasingly organized.

Ms. Akter served as proxy for the New York City Pension Fund, a Walmart shareholder, which proposed which proposed a shareholder resolution urging Walmart to require its suppliers to publish an annual, independently verifiable sustainability report. The  resolution did not pass, but received good coverage in The New York Times and other media.

Ms. Akter thanked New York City Comptroller, John Liu, for giving her this opportunity.  "It was a great opportunity to interact directly with decision-makers at Walmart like CEO Mike Duke,” Ms. Akter said after the shareholder meeting.  “Afterwards I spoke with several Walmart associates.  They told me things like, ‘Well said,’ ‘Great that you brought this issue here,' 'I appreciated hearing your story,' and 'I sympathize with you.'"

It’s so wonderful that USTR believes that the Colombian government has demonstrated in the past two months that it is turning around on a dime to end violence and impunity and respect the basic rights of workers in Colombia after two decades of being the most dangerous country in which to be a trade unionist.  Oh, wait, maybe USTR is thinking about getting the free trade agreement passed and maybe it’s not an unbiased assessment.  The Obama Administration can’t argue that violence against trade unionists has declined since Candidate Obama defended his opposition to the Colombia trade agreement precisely because of the violence.

Mitch Ellmauer, Intern, International Labor Rights Forum

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