Challenges

The Challenges that Crecentia outlined included:

"Issues around discrimination, cultural and religious prejudices: in our region we work with Africa and the Middle East.  In the Middle East it is seldom that women participate; they need permission from their husbands.  When we started in Ethiopia there was 0 of them but we continue to put pressure and they saw they needed women to participate."

"Other issues arise from war: women are the first to be affected. And poverty, migration to different countries or regions, the HIV pandemic, obsolete legislations, emerging effects of globalisation and privatisation policies to mention a few."

"Other issues are the inadequate provision of education and skill development, the violation of women's human rights, sexual harassment in a predominantly male environment, currently there is an actual increase of cases of this nature."

"Actual violence against women it is growing in Africa and the Middle East.  Why this anger against women?  Women are starting to occupy senior positions and males feel threatened.  One of the things we have acknowledged is that, as women enter high levels of employment, they have lower levels of benefits and pay than their male counterparts.  One other issue is representation and participation of women in trade union activities.  When you ask, the first priority is always a male, never a female.  We always ask if they have women representation, we don't look at their delegations if there are no women there."

"In southern Africa we work with various organisations.  They have adopted a charter for construction workers, unions negotiated for women to be 10% of the workforce and to have the same rights.  We are currently only successful in Palestine in the Middle East, the road for women there is very important.  In West Africa we deal with issues around women's employment.  It is very crucial to give support.  We work with men and women about women's issues.  If you keep women in a separate room they become marginalised, they have to be in the main room."

Key Achievements

Key achievements that she told us about were:

"BWI have achieved adopted policies on gender, which are in the main agenda and there is funding for gender and women’s issues."

"Women have been put into power.  Our first secretary was a woman from Sweden.  She was there two terms, she retired but she would have still continued.  I am the only woman representative amongst the global federations.  I have all female colleagues."

"We support childcare in activities so women can bring their children; skills, vocational training. We have a programme to train plumbers, bricklayers, and electricians.  Women are not allowed to work as such in some countries, we are assisting unions to make sure women are found."

"Protective clothing is another issue, the gear women get is men's which needs to change.  Also facilities for ablution, in the construction site, we now have a female friendly environment."

"We also build confidence; we have celebrations.  We have stories from women in our website: where are they, what are they doing; they learn about our frustrations.  With regards to the HIV pandemic, the discussion about sex is not in the open; women have to be able to decide on their bodies."

"We have skill development for their sustainable development; also lobbying for legislation."

"Enhancing skills to develop training materials at all levels, and also with special consideration for marginalised groups so they can compete effectively against male counterparts.  We have to promote the removal of male dominated fields.  Women have to be able to enter them.  The training should enhance gender sensitive negotiators."

BWI's World Cup 2010 campaign

Later Crecentia spoke about BWI’s World Cup 2010 campaign for decent work and beyond – and she concluded:

"We handed the torch to Brazil because they are the next hosts. Having had a successful campaign for our sector the struggle is not yet over.  We have shown that local solidarity can cause changes globally.  Not by doing things remotely but by being there and taking action."

"We provide this advocacy information so that women workers groups can organise better and at a regional level. We develop training for organising such as Production Mapping for effective organising in the factories such as done by our sisters in Mexico."

A Regional Network for Domestic Workers

"We also provide training on advocacy for domestic workers to form a regional network.  At first we thought it was impossible to organise domestic workers because behind closed doors you cannot really have access to them.  Domestic workers themselves don’t see their work as work especially as they work as domestic helpers in the homes of relatives and friends. "Many of our local groups got together knocking on doors, stopping them at bus stops to see if we could organise them.  It was about to getting them to understand that they do productive work.  Initially there was no organisation that could do this, now we have 16 domestic workers organisations and half of them are trade unions. In 5 years CAW has successfully organised the Asian Domestic Workers Network, which went on to successfully represent Asia and mobilise for an ILO Domestic Workers Convention.."

Training

"CAW organises training on occupational health and safety, not only with domestic workers, but also the garment industry."

"We organise leadership training workshops and exchange and exposure programmes at regional level so that women workers are more assertive and build solidarity links among grassroots organisations and unions. Thus CAW plays an effective and invaluable role that is unparalleled as a regional women workers labour organisation."

Campaigning

"CAW is also a campaigning organisation. Together with the Asia Floor Wage Alliance we have organised yearly campaign on Decent Wage for Decent Work.  This campaign coincides with May Day here local and national level groups join this call in conjunction with their May Day celebrations."

"The Asia Floor Wage campaign in the garment industry represents an indictment of companies and governments alike, raising issues of Ethical Production, effectiveness of use of Codes of Conduct, putting pressure on Trade Agreements.  It took some time to convince Trade Unions of the importance of a campaign around a Living Wage."

"One aspect of this campaign is to hold a People's Tribunal on Decent wage, the first of will take place in in Sri Lanka in March 2011. Women workers will bring testimonies about their experiences on working and living conditions.  Other expert evidence will be given on wage deficit and consumer response. "We will also have brands to come and respond to our allegations as well as people with legal background, people from the Asia Floor Wage campaign, workers themselves, these will be different groups represented there.  We hope to attract labour ministers to also come. There will be other such tribunals in Cambodia, Indonesia, India, Europe and America. In this campaign we work together with CCC (Clean Clothes Campaign) and the AFW Alliance India."

Supporting Workers Initiatives

"CAW has supported the initiatives of workers in alternative forms of organising:  campaigns and appeals in support of actions taken by workers, for example, Triumph workers struggles in Thailand and the Philippines; National Strike in Cambodia for better pay."

"None of this would be possible without an organisation like CAW that is able to work with local groups with a regional perspective. What is the rationale behind these links and strategies?  To create a larger platform and a louder voice.  To attract much needed support and solidarity of campaigners in other countries of the global South and North, as well as international bodies such as the ILO. To ensure that CAW’s campaigning is visible to workers, governments, international bodies, companies and policy makers."

Alternative Organising Strategies

As part of the panel asking "How are International Solidarity & Support Actions enabling Women to organise and fight for their Rights?”, Maria gave a report from the Women Workers Academy Workshop on Alternative Organising strategies, held in South Korea in 2009.  This workshop was designed to provide the space and opportunities to share organising experiences and learn from each other and also to have in-depth discussion on strategies to deal with challenges that we are facing now.

"Organising is one of the most important tools for transforming power relations, especially for people who are marginalised and have less power vis-a-vis more dominant groups.  Organising is also crucial for empowering women workers who are bearing the brunt of inequalities and oppressions brought on my neo-liberal globalisation."

Like many other participants, Maria said that the language barrier was a real challenge with nine different languages being used at the workshop.  The use of interpreters was time-consuming but a necessity in work with grassroots activists who have little chance to learn foreign languages.

Case Studies

Six case studies were presented at the workshop – all are in the Workshop Report in pdf format, which you will be able to download soon.  Maria spoke of the many common challenges shared in the workshop, including:

For irregular workers – weak social protection, weak bargaining power, less organising rights, weak social safety net, weak law enforcement or even no law enforcement at all, corruption and repression of the labour movement by governments, Unions' problems with recruitment.

Useful Strategies

She also spoke of useful strategies to meet these challenges:

"Commonly many of us use legal advocacy as an important strategy to change poor enforcement or no legal protection.  At the Union level, there are various strategies to organise workers such as access to scattered women by door-to-door or visiting workplaces, collective actions including collective bargaining and protests, training on labour rights and leadership and advocacy and campaigning.  Specifically, there are some creative and alternative things used by the groups such as recruiting young women and developing communities with alternative values."