ILAW currently unites over 1,400 members across more than 100 countries. Members understand and are guided by the conviction that the mobilization of the collective power of workers is essential to addressing the multiple crises which we all face today. The ILAW Network is led by a team of experienced attorneys on four continents, and is guided by an international advisory board.

The network was formed in 2019 out of the recognition that workers and unions everywhere face many of the same legal problems, including against some of the same companies, but too often they were left to confront these issues in isolation. At the same time, the legal support to employers is well financed, well organized and well capacitated. It was therefore necessary to create the space for workers’ legal advocates to collaborate and strategize across borders to confront today’s most pressing labor challenges.

The ILAW Network’s work is grounded in an intersectional approach that blends high-quality and rigorous legal research, advocacy, and technical assistance. We are committed to cross-movement building, partnering with feminist groups, environmental organizations, and human rights advocates to ensure an enabling environment for workers worldwide.
 

Our work to date includes:

  • Supporting labor law reform in over two dozen countries.
  • Filing over 15 amicus briefs in national and regional human rights courts. In several of those cases, the courts have closely followed our argumentation.
  • Conducting high-quality legal research on a variety of legal problems, including those associated with digital platform work, digital surveillance and privacy, artificial intelligence, employment discrimination, the informal economy, supply chain accountability, migrant worker rights, and more, as seen here. The research is undertaken for the purpose of applying it to action, and members around the world have used the materials that are developed to shape advocacy and litigation.
  • Establishing a Future of Labor Law database, which sources best practices on pressing legal issues and proposes model laws and regulations to best protect the rights of workers.
  • Publishing a multi-lingual biannual journal, the Global Labour Rights Reporter, featuring articles from ILAW members on a variety of topics, including climate change, a feminist vision of labor law, labor law, supply chain accountability, and migrant worker rights.
  • Supporting unions to file claims with and develop the labor jurisprudence of regional human rights bodies, including the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights and the African Commission for Human and Peoples Rights, as well as international bodies, including the International Labor Organization (ILO) and UN treaty bodies.
  • Involvement in litigation before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on protecting the right to strike in international law.
  • Providing targeted multi-lingual training and webinars on a variety of topics such as the right to strike, collective bargaining, the impact of technology on workers, and international strategies to prevent wage theft from migrant workers.
  • Maintaining a Strategic Litigation Fund (SLF) to make modest grants to ILAW lawyers to support impact litigation to defend legal principles and protect worker rights as human rights. The Strategic Litigation Fund is the only dedicated financial resource for impact litigation concerning workers’ rights in the world. From challenging discriminatory exclusion of domestic workers from social protection in several African countries, to enforcing legislation against forced labor and human trafficking in Nepal, to driving transnational supply chain litigation seeking to ensure accountability of multinational corporations in Brazil and Germany, the Strategic Litigation Fund provides much-needed resources to win long-term system change through legal reform. The SLF has awarded 24 impact grants since 2022 to protect and expand workers rights in Albania, Brazil, Ecuador, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Germany, India, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, South Africa, Switzerland, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.

 

At its core, the ILAW Network is a legal community of solidarity, shared knowledge, and coordinated action—working together to defend and advance the rights of workers everywhere.

Connect with the ILAW Team | View ILAW’s Advisory Board & Institutional Supporters