Each year we have a small pot of money, as part of our funding from Oxfam Novib, which is to be distributed to organisations proposing a small project to benefit women workers.
Women workers’ organisations, trades unions and other organisations working on labour rights issues, can use this funding to prepare a small report on issues that require urgent attention and that particularly affect the labour rights of women workers.
If you know of or can conceive a project benefiting women workers and would like to apply for money from this fund, please contact us.
In 2009 – 2010, we gave £1500 to each of four proposals.
Chinese Women Workers persistence in struggle for justice and rights
Chinese Working Women Network - CWWN - was set up in 1996 as a non-governmental organization with the mission of promoting betterment for the lives of Chinese migrant women workers and developing feminist awareness of workers’ empowerment. Core members are labour organizers, feminists, university professors, researchers, social workers, cultural activists, workers and students. Our goal is to facilitate migrant women workers to fight for sustainable development in China.
According to the Labour Law of People Republic of China, an additional monthly-based allowance should be provided to every worker during the summer period to subsidize workers for buying some supplements or herbal tea to maintain good health. However, many employers violate the law which does not offer this subsidy to their employees by different excuses. Furthermore many workers do not know about this right due to the poor promotion by the Government and the irresponsible manner of the enterprises.
In Guangdong, Chinese Working Women’s Network (CWWN) have been working with several women workers to try to organize other workers to urge their employers to offer them the high temperature allowance. Undoubtedly, the process of struggle has been full of obstacles as management have tried to dissolve the solidarity among workers by all means. By bringing the workers actions to the attention of other factory owners, and in order to escape the responsibility to pay for the allowance, the alliance of business owners have cooperated with the local officials. Government officials have warned workers not to approach any labour organisation as they were monitored and accused staff of the labour organization as illegal lawyers, persuaded workers to keep away from them. The officials gave up their neutral position and abolished the regulations to justify and legalized the factory owners’ irresponsible action. After the promulgation of the abolishment of high temperature allowance, the workers can only accept the injustice changes with reluctance.
Throughout this case, it shows that when the officials and capitalists collude together, the exploitation towards workers can be very flagrant. However, beside the underprivileged position of the workers, it also show their persistence of strive for justice and rights. CWWN report that these problems have not been resolved yet and even go worse. As a result, they are increasing their organizing work, such as promoting the labour laws among workers, and increase the intervention by supporting the struggle inside the factory. Moreover, they are calling for the international support regarding the violation of labour rights issues in China, by monitoring and campaign against the misbehavior of the capitalist.
CWWN’s website http://www.cwwn.org/eng/eng_main.html
Developing a Strategy to campaign for a Living Wage in Lesotho
Lesotho Clothing and Allied Workers Union has been organizing in the garment and textile sector for over a decade. The new investments in Lesotho, which came about as a response to the Africa Growth Opportunity Act, at the beginning of the decade, resulted in Asian companies setting up garment factories and an unprecedented number of jobs being created.
Whilst the creation of jobs creation is welcomed, new challenges have come with the process and jobs have never been created as quality jobs. Both the wages continue to be far below the living wage and the conditions of employment are even more of a problem. Through the small project fund, in partnership with the Factory Workers Union (FAWU), LECAWU recently facilitated a workshop for workers identifying the key changes needed in working conditions particularly for women.
Wages in Lesotho have dropped for the last 5 years and no consideration is made to different job categories that exist in the industry or in different industries. Consequently workers (80-90% women including single mothers and most coming from rural areas supporting two families) are finding that their buying power is declining in real terms, and that conditions are declining rather than improving.
Trade union fragmentation is depriving workers of the opportunity to fight as one from factory to federation or centre levels, thus giving employers opportunities to exploit their workforce. Creating a shared platform on which to raise issues such as demanding a living wage is essential in achieving improved conditions.
There is no centralised bargaining structure in the country and employers resist plant bargaining at all cost. Work needs to take place on a broader nationwide, sector based bargaining processes i.e. working towards an Industrial Council.
The workshop was part of the first phase to get the shop floor leadership involved in determining what a living wage for Lesotho would look like. Information had been gathered on the food basket cost to determine the figures. Lastly the workshop worked on a strategy to reach out to the membership for mobilisation.
A Workshop gives Women Workers the opportunity to discuss gender disparity problems in the Textile Sector in Uganda
Uganda Textiles Garment Leather and Allied Workers Union (UTGLAWU) was formed and registered in 1974 to represent workers in the textiles sector both economically and socially. Textiles is one of the traditional sectors that have sustained Uganda’s economy since the colonial times to date. The sector involves a very big part of the country’s population and in the formal employment, it brings together over 150,000 workers (men and women in the ratio of about 70% to 30% women and men respectively).
Through the small project fund, on 22nd January, 2010 UTGLAWU organized a one day workshop focusing on gender disparity issues. The workshop identified some of the key problems facing working women in Uganda. These included discrimination at work, low levels of income, HIV/AIDS, extended families, inadequate sanitary faciilities, unequal participation in decision making, lack of proper implementation of Law and Collective Bargaining Agreement and casualisation of labour.
These factors coupled with the known gender disparities in the African setting such as low levels of education, lack of support from husbands, traditional beliefs by different cultures, home responsibilities, sexual harassment, fear, stigmatization continue to disadvantage the workers hence the dire need for any response that addresses these problems.
Recommendations regarding the most appropriate action on women issues are:
The Rights of Palestinian Women Workers
Since the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, Palestinian workers have become an important constituent of the Israeli labour market. Updates figures show that around 60,000 Palestinian workers are employed in the Israeli market, of which about 3,000 in the Jerusalem area and 18,000 in settlements in the West Bank, with permits to work in the areas of industry, agriculture and construction.
After two years of pilot activities that included empowerment of workers and documentation of their working conditions, and while we can paint a broad picture of the general problems confronted by male Palestinian workers, the purpose of this project is to determine the specific problems faced by Palestinian women workers in the settlements.
There are no available figures regarding the number of women workers. Kav LaOved aims to fill in this gap in our knowledge regarding women workers, to document the situation of women workers and to provide support to this special vulnerable group of women and improve their labour rights and employment conditions.
Project staff: Salwa Aleenat, a Palestinian-Israeli journalist, will be the coordinator of the project and Hanna Zohar, Kav LaOved director and founder, will be the manager of the initiative. More th
an 95% of Kav LaOved staff is women.
The Israeli government has declared in the past that it would be 'disengaging' Palestinian labour by 2010. This goal is unrealistic both in terms of enforceability and in terms of economic needs. One solution being promoted is the creation of "free trade" industrial zones along the green line and near Jewish settlements, where Palestinians could work in Israeli factories. Such industrial zones in fact already exist (Barkan, Atarot) and are supposed to be the model for future labour relations.
Such zones are also a fertile ground for discriminatory labour terms and violations of human and labour rights and may also have a major impact on the employment of women. It is therefore crucial today to study these zones integrating gender lenses in our analysis, in order to prevent future large scale violations of human and labour rights.
Project Plan: 10-12 workshops for Palestinian workers women that will include:
- information
- documentation tools
- legal assistance
- registration of complaints
Kav LaOved’s website: http://www.kavlaoved.org.il/default_eng.asp
| 
| 
