Developing Strategies for Change for Women Workers in African Horticulture

This project will improve the lives of women horticultural workers who form the majority of the workforce on farms in East Africa that supply to European markets. Many of these women are suffering from a lack of labour rights and social security in the workplace.

The project will support initiatives designed to tackle the causes of the labour rights problems on the farms and strengthen the capacity of local organisations to support women horticultural workers.

Project duration:  April 2008 – March 2011

What we want to achieve:

To use Advocacy, Worker Empowerment, through Training and Trade Union organising, and Action Research to promote improvement in the following areas:

• Casual contracts converted to seasonal/permanent contracts

• Increase in salary

• Written contracts in a language that the workers understand with their full benefits and rights/obligations documented.

• Freedom to organise in Trade Unions

• Women’s committees formed and women as branch secretaries

• Adequate protective clothing for all workers

• Medical facilities to be accessed by workers

• Improved sanitary provisions

• Urgent establisment and implementation of policies regarding sexual harassment, health and safety, harsh treatment and gender discrimination.

• Improved reproductive rights in respect to maternity leave, conditions for pregnant women and new mothers and child care

• Adequate recompense for overtime and a free choice the overtime hours they perform

• Access to Savings and Credits Schemes

How we will achieve this:

1. Unionisation:

Goals: strengthen union capacity to represent members and negotiate CBAs, increase union membership, promote women’s issues within the unions.  All activities to be undertaken with full collaboration of union partners.

2. Social Codes of practice

Goals: to improve auditing practices of codes of practice, to extend the use of codes of practice on farms, to ensure gender provisions are incorporated into codes of practice.

3. Purchasing Practices

Goals: to prove link between purchasing practices and labour rights violations on farms, to work with buyers to create strategies to reduce pressure generated by purchasing practices, to generate pressure from other stakeholders on key buyers to improve purchasing practices.

4. Influencing key stakeholders including workers, farm management, employer/export organisations, government and unions

Goals: to develop relationships with key stakeholders and use these relationships to influence change at farm level and at policy level.

5.  Worker training

Goals: to train workers in their labour rights, gender awareness, and international codes of conduct in order to empower them to more effectively claim their rights in the workplace and participate in union structures.