The Towards Effective Courts and Coordinated Labor Justice (TECLAB) project aims to support independent state labor courts created by Mexico’s 2019 Labor Law Reform to administer labor justice in an effective, efficient, and consistent manner.

The SWEET project empowers sugarcane field workers in the Dominican Republic to improve their working and living conditions through increased use of formal and informal mechanisms, including legal assistance, social services, and grievance processes.

The Worker Empowerment in South America project seeks to improve respect for labor rights in Brazil, Colombia, and Peru by strengthening democratic, independent workers' organizations in the agricultural, platform (gig) economy, manufacturing, and mining sectors.

This project will strengthen the capacity of unions to organize by legitimizing collective bargaining agreements, supporting internal leadership elections, building partnerships, and providing independent unions with legal support and training for lawyers. The project will operate in the Mexican states of Guanajuato, San Luis Potosi, Queretaro, Estado de Mexico and Mexico City, as well as Mexico’s northern states by promoting authentic collective bargaining in the automotive, auto parts, aerospace, call centers, electronics, garment, industrial bakeries, logistics and mining sectors.

The ALFA project will strengthen the capacity of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) sectoral bodies and member countries to coordinate and collaborate to address forced labor and abusive working conditions in the region’s fishing industry. ALFA will focus on ASEAN regional policy implementation, and increased engagement with the private sector, worker organizations, and civil society to mitigate forced labor and trafficking, and improve working conditions for a more sustainable, responsible and resilient fishing sector.

Part of the Root Causes of Migration Strategy for northern Central America, this project seeks to improve workers’ rights in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador by supporting workers’ organizations in the banana, melon, palm oil, and pineapple sectors in Honduras; the banana and palm oil sectors in Guatemala; and in the garments (maquila) sector in El Salvador.

This project seeks to promote greater compliance with labor law and standards for acceptable conditions of work, including occupational safety and health, hours of work, and wages in the DRC’s mining, distribution, and construction/public works sectors.

To build the capacity of workers, support worker engagement and organizing, and strengthen democratic worker organizations in the aerospace, mining, and call center industries, such that they become protagonists in fulfilling the potential of Mexico’s historic labor reform. The project will offer workers and their organizations expert technical assistance, ongoing skills development, and pro bono advisory and legal services. Additionally, the project will create spaces for analysis, exchange, reflection, and the development of recommendations to improve labor law reform implementation.

Despite the significance of the agriculture, fishing, and mining industries to the US’ trade relations with Philippines and Indonesia, these sectors are characterized by poverty and poor working conditions, especially at the lower tiers of the supply chain in rural areas.

Better Work is a comprehensive program that brings together all levels of the apparel industry to improve working conditions and respect of labor rights for workers, while boosting the competitiveness of apparel businesses. As a result of their participation with Better Work, export apparel factories in Ethiopia have improved compliance with labor law including issues of compensation, contracts, occupational safety and health and working time. By enhancing working conditions, Better Work Ethiopia increases the factories’ productivity and profitability.

This project will promote greater compliance with labor law and increase workers’ access to judicial and non-judicial remedies for labor violations in Armenia, with a focus on the mining and service sectors.

The Improving Working Conditions in the Mexican Automotive Supply Chain project is working to improve the quality of inspections and inspection follow-ups conducted by labor inspectors; strengthen government administration and coordination of the labor inspectorate and other institutions involved in labor law enforcement; and  strengthen the ability of labor courts and other institutions to effectively conciliate and adjudicate labor cases, including administration and coordination of union representation challenges.

This project enhances governments’ capacity to create, implement, and monitor the application of labor laws by working with ministries of labor, labor judges, and other judicial labor authorities. It seeks to use data collected from labor inspections to identify gaps that facilitate violations and to support legal reforms to address them. The project also uses data analytics to identify and combat labor inspection corruption, waste and inefficiency, and identifies regional inspection units in need of training and capacity building.

Promoting acceptable working conditions in trade partner countries helps the U.S. create a fair playing field for its own workforce and for U.S. companies that play by the rules. This project seeks to ensure that workers in the agricultural export sector in Guatemala, with whom the U.S. has a free trade agreement, receive at least the minimum wage, work within legal hours of work limits, receive due compensation for overtime, and operate in a safe working environment.

Workers and civil society organizations help to supplement and support government labor law enforcement efforts by proactively identifying potential labor violations and filing justiciable complaints with the appropriate authorities.  This project works in U.S. trade partner countries to improve labor law enforcement, as well as compliance with labor-related U.S. trade provisions, by improving the involvement of workers and civil society organizations in this process.

This project will improve enforcement of minimum wage, hours of work and occupational safety and health laws in the agricultural export sector in Costa Rica. By strengthening legal and administrative mechanisms of enforcement while engaging employers and workers to improve compliance in the workplace, the project will help promote supply chains free of exploitative labor and a fair playing field for workers in the U.S. and around the world.

All economies, whether in the United States or in Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras), need timely, accurate information to fuel efficiencies in their labor markets. These efficiencies, in turn, help ensure social stability and contribute to economic growth – both within countries and beyond. This project will seek to strengthen labor market information systems in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to create useful labor market intelligence -- helping workers to find jobs, employers to fill the skills gap and economies to grow.

This project supports the government of Colombia in meeting its commitments to the U.S. under the Action Plan associated with the U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement.

The project builds the capacity of workers’ organizations or other civil society organizations to assist foreign migrant workers in Malaysia.

Better Work is a comprehensive program that brings together all levels of the apparel industry to improve working conditions and respect of labor rights for workers, while boosting the competitiveness of apparel businesses. As a result of their participation with Better Work, export apparel factories in Bangladesh have improved compliance with labor laws, including on issues of compensation, contracts, occupational safety and health, and working time. By enhancing working conditions, Better Work Bangladesh increases the factories’ productivity and profitability.

Better Work Jordan strives to accelerate improvements in the working conditions and business competitiveness of Jordan’s garment industry as well as the exporting industrial sector at large. The project strategy is two-tiered: the factory level and the institutional and policy level.

The project will assist Georgia with resolving a General System of Preferences petition by upholding workers’ rights and working conditions in accordance with International Labor Standards.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) is implementing the MAST capacity building component of the Better Work program to increase labor law compliance in the apparel sector.

Better Factories Cambodia is part of the Better Work Program, a comprehensive effort that brings together all levels of the apparel industry to improve working conditions and respect of labor rights for workers, while boosting the competitiveness of apparel businesses. As a result of their participation with Better Work, export apparel factories in Cambodia have improved compliance with labor law including issues of compensation, contracts, occupational safety and health and working time.

This technical cooperation project aims to strengthen the capacity of workers to file complaints/cases for labor law violations. The Grantee will implement, in partnership with USDOL, a project whose overarching objective is to raise awareness of and improve workers’ ability to protect and claim their labor rights in Colombia.

Project Objectives: The overarching objective is to develop regulations for the new labor legislation consistent with International Labor Standards, educate the tripartite partners on the provisions of the laws and regulations, and build their capacity to promote good industrial relations with the new provisions’ application in practice.

To modernize occupational, mine, chemical and occupational medicine training for the Indian Government.

This ILO project is the manifestation of the Government of Colombia’s commitment in the Action Plan to seek the cooperation, advice, and technical assistance of the ILO to help in Action Plan implementation. In support of this commitment, USDOL has awarded the ILO $10.32 million to develop a robust presence in Colombia that, specifically, engages in a variety of direct technical assistance activities.

This project will provide assistance to export industries to boost competitiveness and productivity by building better systems for factory-level human resource management (HRM), improving compliance with international labor standards and strengthening worker-management dialogue. In the initial stages, the project will focus on the textile and RMG industries, with a view to expanding into the food processing sector (subject to further information and scoping).

Better Work is a comprehensive program that brings together all levels of the apparel industry to improve working conditions and respect of labor rights for workers, while boosting the competitiveness of apparel businesses. As a result of their participation with Better Work, export apparel factories in Vietnam have improved compliance with labor law including issues of compensation, contracts, occupational safety and health and working time. By enhancing working conditions, Better Work Vietnam increases the factories’ productivity and profitability.

To raise awareness and capacity of workers and employers to understand and exercise their rights and obligations in the workplace, increase the effectiveness of the labour administration/inspection systems, promote tripartite dialogue at different levels, and improve the capacity of the judiciary to process claims related to labour relations.

Better Work is a comprehensive program that brings together all levels of the apparel industry to improve working conditions and respect of labor rights for workers, while boosting the competitiveness of apparel businesses. As a result of their participation with Better Work, export apparel factories in Haiti have improved compliance with labor law including issues of compensation, contracts, occupational safety and health and working time. By enhancing working conditions, Better Work Haiti increases the factories’ productivity and profitability.

Better Work is a comprehensive program that brings together all levels of the apparel industry to improve working conditions and respect of labor rights for workers, while boosting the competitiveness of apparel businesses. As a result of their participation with Better Work, export apparel factories in Nicaragua have improved compliance with labor law including issues of compensation, contracts, occupational safety and health and working time. By enhancing working conditions, Better Work Nicaragua increases the factories’ productivity and profitability.