Brazil, Kenya Women Leaders on Front Line of Change

Brazil, Kenya Women Leaders on Front Line of Change

When Rose Omamo started work in 1988 as a mechanic in a vehicle assembly plant in Kenya, she was one of two women in a workplace dominated by hundreds of men. Her employer refused to recognize the women’s basic requests, and even her union, the Amalgamated Union of Kenya Metal Workers, negotiated contracts that excluded their concerns.

So Omamo took action. She demanded her employer provide breastfeeding accommodations for women workers and such fundamental workplace amenities as sanitary receptacles in the restrooms. Soon, she was elected union shop floor leader, and after winning a series of increasingly high positions, now holds the highest office, general secretary, in the 11,000-member national Metal Workers union. Omamo also is national chair of the Congress of Trade Unions–Kenya (COTU-K) Women’s Committee and serves on the COTU-K executive board.

Her male co-workers saw “I could fight for the men, and they put their trust in me,” she says.

Brazil, young workers, gender equality, Solidarity Center

Women, race and youth are all crosscutting issues about workers who are most oppressed.—Rosana Fernandes, Brazil CUT. Credit: Solidarity Center/Tula Connell

Halfway across the globe in Brazil, Rosana Fernandes began working at age 22 at a plastics product factory in São Paulo, where she quickly ran for leadership in her factory union and soon was elected to a top-level position at the national Central Union of Workers (CUT). There, she created the Collective of Chemical Youth Workers section to advance the interests of young workers in her industry.

Now deputy secretary of CUT’s Secretariat of Combating Racism, Fernandes says the issues she has worked on as a union leader—women, race and youth—are all “crosscutting policies about workers who are most oppressed.”

Omamo and Fernandes are two of a 20-member Solidarity Center Exchange Program delegation of women union leaders from Kenya and Brazil here in St. Louis for the AFL-CIO 2017 Convention. While in St. Louis, the group will meet with Mayor Lyda Krewson, the city’s first female mayor, and will travel to Atlanta, where they will explore with leaders from U.S. unions and nonprofits their strategies for empowering women within their organizations.

On the Frontlines for Vulnerable Workers

Leaders in their unions, Omamo and Fernandes also are frontline advocates for empowering women and young workers to take roles in their unions.

“Most of labor move leadership is male dominated,” Omamo says. “What I have come to realize, personally, is that the biggest challenge has been, ‘How can a male trust a woman to lead them?’”

When Omamo ran for national office in April 2016, her slate included two other women, who ran for treasurer and assistant treasurer. Both were elected. “Now we have shop stewards in unions and branch officials and national officials” who are women, she says.

From the national union level, Fernandes has advocated for broader and deeper inclusion of young workers. “We must effectively incorporate youth into policies in way that renews the union movement,” Fernandes says, speaking through a translator. “Society is constantly changing itself and unions need to keep up. We need policies that are not just for youth but with youth.”

Global Solidarity to Achieve Global Goals


In her 17 months as general secretary of the Metal Workers union, Omamo has initiated trainings across the union’s 11 branches in dispute resolution, labor law, grievance handling and collective bargaining negotiating. The workers, many of whom are illiterate, are now effectively negotiating collective bargaining agreements for the first time without national union participation.

“We need to give them tools and skills to be able to represent workers effectively on the shop floor,” she says. She also has streamlined operations and tackled the union’s debt, reducing it from 4.5 million Kenya shillings ($43,200) to 1.2 million Kenya shillings ($11,520).

In Brazil, where Afro-Brazilian workers are disproportionately paid less and work in the most dangerous jobs with little job security, Fernandes is now focused on creating fair playing fields for racially disadvantaged workers.

“It’s very clear racial equality is not alive in labor market,” Fernandes says. For instance, the country’s 8 million domestic workers are overwhelming Afro-Brazilian, “a legacy from slavery that work in the home should be automatically done by black women who don’t deserve to have decent wages or (decent) working conditions,” she says. “It’s 2017, and we’re still fighting for fundamental rights for domestic workers.”

For both women leaders, global solidarity is essential to address the common struggles in their countries and around the world.

“It’s also time for us to unite together to fight together to work together in solidarity and to say we want to change the world of work so that the work that will be done by our members will be decent and not precarious,” says Omamo.

And like all the women on the Solidarity Center delegation, Omamo is ready for the challenge.

As she puts it: “I don’t believe in failing, I believe in achieving.”

Brazil Passes Extreme Anti-Worker Labor Law

Brazil Passes Extreme Anti-Worker Labor Law

Brazil workers and their unions are outraged and vowing further protests over a draconian labor law reform the Senate passed yesterday that will weaken labor regulations as well as restrict financing for unions.

The law, which President Michel Temer supports and is expected to sign, will remove all restrictions on outsourcing, dismantle labor rights, including provisions on vacations, overtime and working hours, give more freedom to employers to negotiate individually with workers rather than collectively through unions, and eliminate the “union tax” paid by all formal-sector workers, which is the principal form of financing for union activities in Brazil.

Workers across Brazil rallied over the past weeks to urge lawmakers to vote against the so-called labor law reform bill, which will mean “lay-offs, end of formal employment and legalization of freelancers,” says Central Union of Workers (CUT) President Vagner Freitas.

“The problem already begins with the name, the lie that there is around [it],” Sérgio Nobre, secretary-general of CUT told thousands of metalworkers gathered in São Paulo on Tuesday. “‘Reform’ gives the impression that it is a good thing.” Nobre said the law would serve the interests of large multinational companies, not workers.

Workers across Brazil launched a 24-hour general strike in April, after the lower house approved the bill. Brazil’s Congress debated the law without the participation of CUT or any trade union opposed to its provisions, says Nobre.

Young people, specifically young black workers, will be especially harmed, because young workers are primarily employed in precarious jobs and are the majority of the unemployed, Julia Reis Nogueira, CUT national secretary of racial equality said in May.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) said the law’s provisions violate international conventions signed by Brazil.

Senators opposed to the bill tried to block the vote with a sit-in at the Senate president’s rostrum, but the session resumed after a six-hour delay and lawmakers passed the law by 50-26.

Temer was indicted in the Supreme Court in June by the independent public prosecutors’ office, and on Monday, a congressman leading a lower house committee on the president’s alleged corruption called on lawmakers to allow Brazil’s top court to try the case.

In Grim Times, Brazil Young Workers Take Charge of Future

In Grim Times, Brazil Young Workers Take Charge of Future

Among the millions of Brazilians who waged a recent 24-hour general strike to protest proposed legislation that would weaken labor regulations, many were young workers, some newly mobilized by the government’s attempts to impose drastic cuts on pensions, salaries and social security and dismantle labor rights, including provisions on vacations, overtime and working hours.

“The labor law reform bill being debated in the National Congress penalizes mainly young people and specifically young black workers, as young workers are primarily employed in precarious jobs and are the majority of the unemployed,” says Julia Reis Nogueira, national secretary of Racial Equality in Brazil’s Central Workers’ Union (CUT), a Solidarity Center partner. “When you put together the generational and racial question, this group will be the main victims of this disastrous reform.”

USW member Al Vega was among four U.S. young worker union leaders meeting with Brazil union activists. Credit: Al Vega

“Any of these ‘reforms’ will make it hard for young people to retire with dignity,” says Al Vega, director of policy and programs at MASSCOSH, where he focuses on strategies for bringing young adults into the U.S. labor movement. “The economic climate has really mobilized young people. They do feel like it is an all-out attack on the working class.”

Vega, 35, was among four U.S. participants in a recent youth and race exchange delegation sponsored by CUT and the AFL-CIO. Over five days, they learned about Brazil’s current political, economic and social environment and heard firsthand about the challenges facing young workers, especially those of Afro-Brazilian descent, in seeking good job and an end to rampant discrimination.

“Institutional racism is keeping them from jobs,” says Vega.

Afro-Brazilian Youth Face Rampant Discrimination, Violence

Although Afro-Brazilians make up 53 percent of Brazil’s population—more than 100 million people—their unemployment rates are typically 35 percent higher than those of white workers and their income is some 50 percent less than that received by white Brazilians. Afro-Brazilians are more than twice as likely to experience poverty than white Brazilians.

Rampant discrimination is behind much of this disparity. It is still common for firms to require pictures on resumes, and to make skin color a preference for selection processes. Workers’ educational levels make little difference: Afro-Brazilian men with a college education were paid only 70 percent of the wages made by white Brazilians. Afro-Brazilian women with a college degree receive only 41 percent of salaries paid to white Brazilians.

The economic struggles of Afro-Brazilians are framed within the country’s long legacy of slavery, which manifests in continuing brutality: One Afro-Brazilian youth is killed every 23 minutes in what some have called an “undeclared civil war,” according to a 2016 report by a Brazilian Senate committee. The committee issued the report in response to “a culture of violence based on racism and prejudice.” A Human Rights Watch report found that police in the state of Rio de Janeiro killed more than 8,000 people between 2006 and 2016, including at least 645 people in 2015—and three-quarters of those killed by police were black men.

Young Afro-Brazilians seeking jobs are doubly disadvantaged, with unemployment for all young adults (ages 15-24) nearing 25 percent in 2016. When young workers do find jobs, half are in the informal economy, where wages are low, work often dangerous and job stability non-existent.

The crisis for young workers is a crisis for Brazil: Nearly one-quarter of the country’s working population was between ages 15 and 24 in 2012.

Young Workers Standing up for Their Future

Brazil, Solidarity Center, human rights

Signs from May Day rally in São Paulo. Credit: Courtney Jenkins

Young people know “there’s no hope for them if they don’t change the system,” says Vega. “They want to figure out how to get more and more young people involved. This is not the time to be on the sidelines. This is the time to get involved.”

In Brazil, a deep economic recession brought on by plummeting export commodities prices and increased inflation are manifesting in increasing unemployment, now at a record high of 13.7 percent. More than 14.2 million Brazilians were without a job in March. With young workers and workers of color especially hard hit by rising unemployment and proposed legislation that would undermine fundamental worker rights, they are standing up for the their future by mobilizing in the streets and through unions and other associations.

Vega, a member of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 9358 and young worker representative on the Massachusetts AFL-CIO Executive Board, was energized to hear from Brazilian delegates representing the Chemical Workers, Bank Workers, Teachers, and Retail and Commercial Workers Union Confederations who shared organizing strategies to reach youth of color in Brazil.

The unions are all members of CUT, Brazil’s largest labor federation, which was founded by rural and urban workers in 1983 as part of the ongoing struggle against the military dictatorship, which took power in 1964. In 2009, CUT created a National Secretariat for Youth and a National Secretariat of Racial Equality. Both secretariats functional locally in all 27 Brazilian states. This structure “has enabled a permanent dialogue between national and state-level youth leaders, in order to collectively construct policies and actions to promote the working youth in the country and to combat racism,” says Reis Nogueira.

“I was getting inspired to see these young people have representatives across Brazil,” says Vega. “That’s one of the key things I heard—because they have those formal positions, they can make sure their issues are being connected.”

Cross-Movement Building Connects Workers in Similar Struggles

Brazil, Solidarity Center, human rights

Brazil unions are partnering with a range of organizations with common goals. Credit: Courtney Jenkins

CUT also is expanding on cross-movement building in Brazil to connect with human rights organizations on organizational strategies and joint struggles for human rights and democracy. Delegates met with representatives of some of those organizations, including the youth wing of the Workers´ Party; Fora do Eixo, a progressive independent media collective; and representatives of the students´ movement.

The delegation, which traveled to Brazil at CUT’s invitation, is part of the federation’s outreach strategy.

Other U.S. participants included Rachel Bryan, an Electrical Workers union member engaged in criminal justice reform work; Sheva Diagne from the AFL-CIO; and Courtney Jenkins, a Postal Workers union member who is president of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists’s Baltimore chapter and coordinator of the young worker program in his union.

Says Vega: “The overall experience was very eye-opening, inspirational, to see what a labor movement can look like when there is a true belief in what they want to achieve.”

Brazil Workers Strike in Early May Day Protest

Brazil Workers Strike in Early May Day Protest

Workers across Brazil launched a 24-hour general strike today, sparked by proposed legislation that would weaken labor regulations and force many Brazilians to work years longer before drawing a pension. Workers are protesting the government’s plans to remove all restrictions on outsourcing, impose drastic cuts on pensions, salaries and social security and dismantle labor rights, including provisions on vacations, overtime and working hours.

Brazil, general strike, pension, Solidarity Center, human rights

Workers protest pension cuts with signs saying, “No one should have to work until they die death.” Credit: CUT

“A small cabal of immensely wealthy business people are the only beneficiaries of what is in effect a scorched-earth economic policy involving a huge transfer of wealth to Brazil’s oligarchs,” says Sharan Burrow, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).

More than 14 million Brazilians are unemployed and the country is in recession, even as nearly a third of President Michel Temer’s cabinet and congressional allies are under investigation, part of a widening corruption scandal that has revealed massive levels of graft at the top of government.

“We are making the biggest general strike in Brazil’s recent history to respond to the biggest attack on social, labor and social security rights that the working class has suffered,” says Claudir Nespolo, president of the Central Workers Union (CUT) in Rio Grande do Sul. CUT is Brazil’s biggest labor confederation and one of several federations that spearheaded the strike.

Unions and their members shut down the subway, train and bus in Sao Paulo, Brasilia, Salvador and Recife, and have partially paralyzed public transport in other major cities like Belo Horizonte and Rio.

Workers, Unions Targeted in Proposed Laws

Public transport staff, bankers, teachers and hundreds of thousands of other workers took to the streets two days after the lower house of Congress passed reforms Wednesday to reduce labor costs and erode the power of unions. The legislation is now in the Senate.

Luiza Batista, president of the National federation of Domestic Workers in Brazil, says the new labor reforms “will be awful” for domestic workers.

“A worker may have a contract with an employer that requires her an hour of work a day, or two hours a day, and her salary will not pay anything,” says Batista. “Employers take advantage of the workers’ needs, knowing their difficulties, to offer inhuman wages and hours of work.”

CUT President Vagner Freitas says the drastic cuts to worker rights are not about saving money but rather an attempt to weaken the trade union movement.

What the government wants to do is ensure “workers do not have a formal contract, so they do not have a clear and legal professional category and therefore have difficulty having a union that protects them,” says Freitas.

Next week, a special congressional commission is due to begin voting on a constitutional amendment that would overhaul the pension system. A survey published last month found that 72 percent of Brazilians opposed the pension reform.

Women’s Economic Empowerment and Workers Rights

Women’s Economic Empowerment and Workers Rights

Globally, women are paid 30 percent less than men—but “imagine instead of corporations making 30 percent more off women’s labor, imagine if that 30 percent were coming back to our communities in the form of wages,” says Shawna Bader-Blau, Solidarity Center executive director.

Speaking on the panel, “Women’s Economic Empowerment and Workers Rights,” a Solidarity Center-sponsored session at the 2016 Association of Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) Forum, Bader-Blau said challenging such wide-reaching corporate power means “we need to partner across social movements.”

Cross-movement building is a goal and theme of the September 8–11 AWID Forum, where more than 1,800 participants from 120 countries are gathering to find strategies for mobilizing greater solidarity and collective power across diverse movements.

Union and worker association leaders from Brazil, Morocco and the United States taking part in the panel shared how unions are helping empower women to achieve economic justice.

Seventy million women around the world are in labor unions or worker associations, says Bader- Blau. “The labor movement is by definition the broadest movement for women on earth that is membership based.”

Morocco, agricultural workers, gender equality, Solidarity Center, human rights

“In the frontlines of this battle we have women who are fighting for labor rights”—Saida Bentahar, CDT Morocco.

In Morocco, the Democratic Confederation of Labor (CDT) in Morocco is helping agricultural workers win bargaining rights with their employers. Most of the workers are women, who live in difficult, fragile conditions, says Saida Bentahar, a member of the CDT Secretariat.

“They sometimes cannot read or write, they live in extreme poverty, they are not paid good wages,” she said, speaking through a translator.

Together with the Solidarity Center, the CDT is training women on their workplace rights, including standing up against sexual harassment.

“Some women wouldn’t even speak at first when we would hold sessions but now they really stand up for what they believe,” says Bentahar. “Together they have written a declaration to guarantee stable labor rights. They will now have equal pay, certificates to assure their skills and capacities. They will have equal opportunities for work and training as well.”

Brazil, human rights, gender equality, Solidarity Center

Junéia Batista, CUT national secretary in Brazil, describes union women’s efforts to negotiate day care and other key issues in bargaining with employers. Credit: Solidarity Center/Tula Connell

Junéia Batista, national secretary of the Confederation of Workers Union (CUT) in Brazil, described how women in the confederation have worked to be part of contract negotiations to ensure issues like day care are included, and to achieve leadership since the confederation formed in 1983.

“We want more,” says Batista, speaking through a translator. “It has been 33 years with men, men, men presiding in the presidency,” she says, and women members are working to establish gender equality measures throughout their union structures.

In Mississippi, a state in the southern United States, the Mississippi Worker’s Center for Human Rights (MWCHR) is helping empower working people in Oxford, an impoverished area with a history of racial violence.

“Wages are not the only point of resistance and struggle we need to be dealing with,” says Jaribu Hill, MWCHR executive director.

Panelists also discussed the increasing attacks throughout the world on workers’ ability to form unions.

“Our broader labor movement is suffering from a closing of democratic space,” says Bader-Blau, citing a 30 percent rise in attacks on worker rights around the world. “Our governments, aided by corporate power, are defining worker rights in narrower and narrower terms.”

“In this environment, in this context, we feel it is so important that women’s work be respected and valued … and dignified and that we fight for this,” she says. “The primarily vehicle for fighting for women’s rights at work is trade unionism.”

As Bentahar says, “In the frontlines of this battle we have women who are fighting for labor rights.”

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