Worker to Worker Solidarity

Overview

The Tyree Scott International Worker to Worker Project, named after LELO’s cofounder Tyree Scott who passed away in 2003, was founded in 1999 to create opportunities for ordinary workers from around the world to communicate with each other and to develop strategies to win their rights in their communities and workplaces in the face of neoliberal policies and a global economy.

LELO’s international work is guided by the Seabeck Principles that were developed in 1999 when LELO hosted 35 ordinary workers from 11 countries at Seabeck, Washington.  These principles are:

  1. The environment is a working class issue and its protection is not incompatible with jobs and development;
  2. All workers should have the right to organize and have that organization recognized by their employer;
  3. All workers should have the right of freedom of movement across borders to work in the country of their choice – free from discrimination and exploitation;
  4. In the transformation of the global economy and privatization, it is women and children who suffer the most from the loss of the public sector and governmental protection for the least advantaged.  We also agree that the home is a workplace and that domestic violence should be considered a workers’ issue.
Worldwide, workers of color and women workers have struggle to expose the global economy as a system that, rather than bringing democracy and opportunity, increasingly denies them and their families’ basic human rights.  LELO has adopted this framework for our organizing. We look to the global south to help update our analysis of problems that disproportionately impact working class communities of color in the US and low income communities.  

The Tyree Scott Worker-to-Worker Project has sponsored delegations to Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba and the Philippines, hosted workers’ solidarity tours and developed popular education tools reaching more than 10,000 ordinary workers.

In 2014, LELO organized an International Prehearing on Immigration in Seattle as part of the three year study of the impact of 20 years of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).  
This was done in conjunction with the Permanent People’s Tribunal in Mexico.  In that pre-hearing, LELO brought migrants living in Oregon, Washington, Vancouver BC, and Mexico to present 24 accusations of human rights violations against their countries or origin.  The final ruling of the Permanent People’s Tribunal concluded that NAFTA had created the opportunity and fulfillment for crimes against humanity by the Mexican, United States and Canadian governments and corporations.

 

Contact

To learn more about this project, please contact Ricardo at ricardo@lelo.org.