Brian Finnegan is Americas regional program director for the Solidarity Center, where he and his team assist workers across Latin America as they fight discrimination, exploitation, and the systems that entrench poverty. Priority to this, he was the global workers rights coordinator at the American Labor Federation-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). Much of his work focused on corporate accountability and workers’ rights in supply chains (see Responsibility Outsourced: Social Audits, Workplace Certification and Twenty Years of Failure to Protect Worker Rights). He is a member of the Stakeholder Advisory Board to the US National Contact Point for the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.
Prior to that, he worked at the Solidarity Center for 12 years. During those years, he ran workers’ rights programs with unions and civil society partners in Colombia, the Southern Cone countries and Brazil. He directed regional and national programs while based in Uruguay and Brazil. Since returning to the US, he has engaged with unions, civil society, multilateral organizations such as the International Labor Organization and Organization of American States and governments regarding human rights and labor rights in countries ranging from Honduras, to Bangladesh to Uzbekistan. Brian has a PhD in American Studies from George Washington University and has published articles on the history of the Washington DC Latino Community, public history, folklore and literature.
