Women Working Worldwide are pleased to announce the start of a new three year project focusing on improving the workplace for women garment workers.

Started in March 2011, the project focuses on work in four countries, namely Madagascar, Lesotho, India and Bangladesh and is jointly funded through the Responsible and Accountable Garment Sector Challenge Fund RAGS, and Comic Relief.

The project will contribute towards building decent workplaces by ensuring sustainable improvement in working conditions for women workers in the formal garment sector in Lesotho and Madagascar and for home/informal workers in India. We expect that 10,000 workers across 20 factories in Lesotho and Madagascar and 2,000 workers in India will directly benefit from improvements in wage, hourly earnings, working hours and overtime, access to social protection, access to maternity rights, improved women’s leadership and reduced incidence in child labour. We will be working with Homeworkers Worldwide and a number of partners on a local level to deliver the work including RINDRA, Lesotho Clothing and Allies Workers Union LECAWU, Alternative Movement for Resources and Freedom Society AMRF, Rural Education and Development Foundation READ, Social Awareness and Voluntary Education Foundation SAVE.

What will we be doing?

Around 200 trainers (majority female) across Lesotho, Madagascar and India will be trained on national labour laws and ILO core conventions and skills building around freedom of association and collective bargaining; organising workers and negotiating legally binding improvements CBA. A proportion will be trained on leadership, women and networking, gender and organising women. The trainers will educate a minimum of 5,000 workers in Lesotho and Madagascar together and 1,650 workers in India.

In southern India we will undertake research with home and informal workers to show conditions and key concerns of workers, identify priorities for building decent work places and the impact of codes of conduct. A manual for tracing home workers in supply chains will assist local organisations to continue to locate home workers after the project’s duration.  Read a full report here (pdf).

In Bangladesh we will be carrying out research with workers across five factory sites and establish a network of women workers’ from these factories. Workshops will be organised with stakeholders such as owner associations, labour rights NGO s, companies, social audit firms, buyers’ forum, workers representatives and government ministries.

We will hold training programmes aimed at building partners’ awareness of the purpose and operations of Ethical Trade Initiative ETI, training on technical issues that impact progress towards the decent work agenda, such as productivity programmes, the living wage campaigns and social auditing.

In the UK we will be carrying out advocacy activities targeting key companies to ensure that they are aware of and acting on workers’ own priorities for building decent workplaces.

Throughout the duration of the project we will be sharing key research findings and holding regular international project meetings, partner exchange visits and visits to work sites.

What do we hope to achieve?

• Over 5,000 workers (majority women) are aware of their labour rights and technical issues impacting the decent work agenda.

• Trained workers join unions or self help groups and negotiate for improved working conditions. Women’s increased unionization and representation in trade union leadership roles will ensure the incorporation of gender clauses in collective bargaining.

• In India, informal workers are recognised as workers and gain access to social protection through the Manual Workers Welfare Board.

• Industrial stakeholders including employers and UK retailers are made aware of workers’ priorities and the impact of retailers’ productivity programmes on wages and other decent work areas.

• The capacity of workers’ organisations to engage with UK and global retailers sitting on ETI is strengthened.

• Lobbying activities targeted at UK and global brands and retailers sitting on ETI bring about changes in company practices and effective responses to workers demands.

Workers, partner organisations and other civil society organisations working with garment workers will benefit from sharing information across supply chains, best practice in supporting workers, and strength through mutual support, solidarity and joint advocacy actions.