Defending Workers Rights From Trauma to Empowerment.

[Music]

every day

three and a half billion people get up

and work

for some work will be a fulfilling

empowering well-paid experience

but for far too many work will be

unfulfilling underpaid and at times

unsafe and for those who speak up

and attempt to organize and improve

their conditions

they could be met with dismissals from

work

and for some for some who seek to defend

worker rights

in some of the darkest corners of the

global economy

they might be met with violence

i know because i almost lost my life

twice in my efforts to defend workers

rights

these experiences have shaped me

and motivated me for the last 20 years

in the research i do on workers rights

and efforts to address these abuses

in the late 1980s after studying in

boston and doing some union organizing

there i moved to el salvador

the country was in the midst of a

violent civil war trade unionists were

being arrested some were being tortured

my job was to document these abuses

with the hope that by getting the word

out this would provide

some degree of protection and we were

partly successful in this work in fact

these were some of the most

fulfilling years of my life every day

that i got up i felt the work

i was doing in some small way was

contributing to change

but then things got difficult for me

i was taken from my home in the early

morning hours by a military security

force

i was put in a basement detention center

a basement cell i was stripped to my

underwear blindfolded handcuffed i was

denied food

and water and forced to stay standing

for long periods of time

and asked about my worker rights

activism

i was released two days later

thanks to an international and national

campaign

friends and colleagues of mine were not

so lucky dozens who were detained around

the same time

were sent to prison

but then the very next month

the labor union office where i worked

was bombed at lunchtime

nine friends and colleagues were killed

that day

one of them was fabe elizabeth velazquez

phoebe was a garment worker

she rose up on the ranks and she became

a union organizer

she was also an outspoken critic of the

government

and the worker rights abuses in the

country

she was sitting with me when she was

killed

i barely survived receiving a severe

head injury

but you know what these extreme

experiences at that time

were not so exceptional in el salvador

in fact in the early years of the war

5125

labor rights activists were killed today

in countries such as guatemala and

colombia and beyond

worker rights advocates are still being

killed

i returned to the u.s i had some medical

procedures i studied for a bit got a

master’s degree

and then i returned to el salvador the

country was going through

an intense transition not only from war

to peace it was transitioning its entire

economic model

export processing zones industrial parks

full of garment factories

were mushrooming across the country

but with them so too were worker rights

violations

i became very involved in one campaign

in a factory called mandarin

where workers had been fired for trying

to form a union the campaign was

international

and it was eventually successful

i’ll never forget the day when i met

with those workers

in front of the factory gates and we

walked in together

and i watched them return to their

workplaces

and begin work again it was one of the

biggest success stories

for garment worker organizing in the

country the workers not only returned to

work they returned

with their union intact

but for me the euphoria would be

short-lived

a few days later three men broke into my

home one put a gun to my head another

put a gun to my chest

and they held me there and they were

waiting for the rush hour traffic to die

down so they could take me with them

luckily a neighbor saw what happened she

called the police when the police

eventually arrived

the three men fled i originally

tried to tell myself this was a

kidnapping attempt

but the police told me otherwise you see

the men made no attempt to cover their

faces

that was because they had no expectation

i would be around later

to identify them what happened to me

that day

was directly linked to my worker rights

advocacy and the return of those

unionists to their jobs

in the period that followed i started to

become more and more aware

of how these multiple traumas

experiences were starting to affect me

there’s this constant sense anxiety this

this sense of unease in my gut that i

just couldn’t get rid of

i always felt hyper vigilant i was on

alert all the time i just couldn’t

get that sensation away but i buried

myself in work

lots and lots of work to control those

sensations

i went back to the u.s i went to cornell

university i worked on getting a phd

i began publishing on worker rights i

then got a job at penn state

i began teaching on worker rights

publishing more on worker rights i was

getting awards and recognitions for my

work

in many ways it seemed like my life was

a tremendous success

a phd from cornell university a job as a

professor at a research one

institution

but deep inside i was still burning up

with anxiety

i was also increasingly suffering from

chronic headaches

they were becoming unbearable

eventually a primary care physician

suggested

we do a brain scan

what those brain scan results would show

would change my life

you see it turns out i have a condition

called chiari malformation

carry is when the skull is just a little

too small for the brain

many adults can have this condition and

be asymptomatic their entire lives

but if you have a brain injury a

concussion

like i did when the labor union office

was bombed what happens is

the brain expands with the concussion

but it has nowhere to go

and the brain tonsils herniate downward

and slowly

they block the flow of cerebral final

fluids

causing the chronic excruciating

headaches

in 2006 i had something called

decompression brain surgery

three neurosurgeons operated on me for

seven and a half

hours afterwards

the cerebral spinal fluids began to flow

again

and slowly very slowly

those chronic headaches that debilitated

me for so long

began to dissipate

afterwards i began a period of

reflection

and here’s one of my thoughts from that

period

when we go through such traumatic

experiences

we can either get pushed inward and the

world can become a very scary place

or if we allow them we can reflect on

them

and use those experiences to be a source

of empowerment

to give us vision and a deeper sense of

purpose

these processes are never easier than

never linear

but eventually for me with time

a lot of time i began to see how i could

use that process

i still continue to work hard but i do

so with a greater sense of calmness

and clarity and i also feel like

i can use and draw on my experiences

to very quickly identify and connect

with workers

and their stories of abuse

i continued my travel i went back to

latin america

i was in vietnam in bangladesh in india

everywhere i went i felt i could very

can

quickly connect with workers and their

stories of abuse

and i became almost obsessed with

finding the answer as a researcher the

answer to one very basic question

why is it if the global garment industry

generates billions of dollars in profits

every year

are worker rights abuses so endemic to

the sector

i began probing this argument with a

very simple data set

i started looking at the prices brands

and retailers were paying to make our

garments

and i found a continual decline

and then for those same countries for

the same period of time

i mapped out respect for workers rights

the correlation was really apparent as

brands squeezed down on prices

respect for worker rights declined

precipitously

i then became very interested in this

question of abuse at work

and what i was finding was that as the

prices got squeezed down

factory owners were demanding workers

work faster and faster

and faster they were being told to do 60

operations an hour to keep their jobs

and they had to do 80 operations to do

their jobs

in some cases they had to do 100

operations to keep their jobs

and when they couldn’t meet these

inhumane production targets

they were yelled at and at times hit

my research showed survey research that

64 percent of garment workers in india

experienced verbal abuse at work

these sourcing practices

my research showed were contributing to

gender-based violence at work

when the covet pandemic hit all these

trends were exacerbated and new

problems emerged we documented this in a

research report with the worker rights

consortium

and what we found was that brands and

retailers responded to covid

by abruptly canceling orders billions

and billions in dollars of

dollars of orders the impact on workers

and the factories was devastating

workers were sent home in many cases

without their severance pay without

salary

soon the majority of garment workers and

their families were reporting

cases of malnutrition

we then put up a public tracker which

showed which companies had paid up and

which companies had not paid up

very soon a movement emerged demanding

brands

pay up what was owed facebook twitter

media accounts instagram

lit up with the counts of the impact of

these cancellation on workers and their

lives

within months 22 billion

22 billion dollars were paid up

one longtime activist referred to this

as the single greatest

achievement for worker rights advocacy

in the garment sector in decades

i am now the founding director of a

research center

and a master’s program in global workers

rights with some of the most incredible

professors

and students from around the world i’m

working actively on campaigns for living

wages and respect for freedom of

association rights

through binding agreements

and here’s my take away from all of this

i believe we can all we can all tap into

our most trying experiences and use that

for our own sense of empowerment

to promote change

so my question for all of you today is

this

what experiences have impacted you in

your lives

and how might you use them for your own

sense of empowerment

purpose and clarity to contribute to

some of the changes

that this world so desperately needs

thank you very much