This report details a set of case studies on collective bargaining by informal workers in four different countries: Waste pickers in Minas Gerais state in Brazil, beedi workers in India, Georgia minibus taxi workers and street vendors in Monrovia, Liberia. The study also references the efforts of domestic workers in Uruguay.
Working in large-scale agriculture creates a whole new set of challenges for women—exposure to harsh pesticides and chemicals, isolation, sexual harassment and violence and a production quota that seeks to “turn women into machines.” But women in agriculture also have the opportunity to earn wages that can better themselves and their families, said Samantha Tate, Solidarity Center country program director for Peru.
Tate opened the Tuesday afternoon plenary session at the Solidarity Center conference in São Paulo, Brazil, “Women’s Empowerment, Gender Equality and Labor Rights: Transforming the Terrain,” where 100 union and community activists from 20 countries are meeting to share strategies, network and build collective strength.
At the plenary, “Women Worker Rights in Agriculture: the Reality, Challenges and Opportunities,” four women working to empower female agricultural workers—in Peru, Honduras, Morocco and Brazil—discussed the hardships of women agricultural workers and the successes they have achieved.
“While the sector grows and grows, we as workers are not growing,” said Rosa Julia Perez Aguilar, secretary of women’s, child and adolescent affairs at the union confederation, FENTAGRO, in Peru. Although the monthly salary for a woman working in agriculture is $234, a family of five in Peru needs a minimum $546 a month to live, she said. Salaries are so low, “children are forced to work” to enable families to survive—and as a result, they receive little or no education, perpetuating the cycle of poverty.
Women in all four countries face similar struggles and, in words of Alessandra da Costa Lunes, are fighting to “break the invisibility.”
“Overcoming inequality will mean full citizenship for women,” says Costa, vice president and women’s security at CONTAG, a 22 million-member union confederation in Brazil.
In Central America, Irís Munguía is among those holding leadership trainings and empowering women in the banana, pineapple and sugar cane industries to take on important roles in their unions and their communities. Munguía, the first female coordinator of COLSIBA, the Latin American coordinating body of agricultural unions, also has helped spearhead a contract framework agreement for multiple Central and South American nations that women can adapt during bargaining.
In Morocco, women working in agriculture in Morocco are taking part in unique trainings tailored for a workforce with low literacy, said Touriya Lahrech, coordinator of the Confederation Democratique du Travail (CDT). In turn, these women go on to train other women in isolated rural areas about such issues as the involvement of international financial institutions in their local economies, a situation “not unique to Morocco but … a shared reality with other women, the fruit of economic policies that deny women their social and economic rights.”
And in Brazil, union women taking part in the gender equality conference plenary session now have a new network of sisters and brothers in working in agriculture from around the world.
Says Lahrech: “The moment we go back to our countries, I will tell my colleagues and sisters we are not alone. Our solidarity as women coming from across the globe can only move forward our positions as women.”
With images of the April 24 Rana Plaza building collapse in Bangladesh as a backdrop, five union and community activists discussed the struggles women face in the light manufacturing industry—and how they are being empowered—in today’s first plenary at the Solidarity Center on gender equality. More than 100 participants from 20 countries are meeting July 30-31 in São Paulo, Brazil, to discuss strategies at “Women’s Empowerment, Gender Equality and Labor Rights: Transforming the Terrain.”
Morium Akter Sheuli, general Secretary of the Bangladesh Independent Garment Union Federation (BIGUF), opened the first of two plenaries this morning, “Women Worker Rights and Gender Equality in Light Manufacturing: What Way Forward.” In Bangladesh, where more than 1,100 workers were killed when the poorly constructed Rana Plaza building collapsed, 80 percent of workers in the ready-made garment industry are women, she said. Although garment exports account for 75 percent of Bangladesh’s exports, workers are paid a minimum of $38 a month while enduring dangerous and deadly workplaces.
Women also comprise the majority of light manufacturing workers in Honduras, where Evangelina Argüeta Chincilla is coordinator for the Apparel Sector Organizing at the General Workers Confederation. At the plenary, Argüeta described how unions created international support for their struggle after workers were prevented from joining unions in Honduras. She said: “It was mainly through our alliances with the United States and with student groups, students are the main consumers of our products,” that women garment workers achieved victories, such as reopening a closed factory, following an international campaign.
Claudia Santos Reguelin from the Brazilian Metalworkers Union of the City of Osasco, shared how the union’s Women’s Collective provides a space for women to participate and grow as leaders and members. The collective runs seminars for workers and ensures issues central to women—who often make up 80 percent of factory workers—are on the bargaining table.
Offering a broad overview of the struggles for women, who make up the majority of workers in the light manufacturing industry, Lynda Yanz, executive director of the Canada-based Maquila Solidarity Network, pointed to their lack of significant gains. Although unions and grassroots organizations have prioritized key issues like precarious work, “there has been very little discussion about the ‘enabling’ issues—that is, what is behind women not taking leadership roles,” like lack of child care.
“What would it mean if we put women’s needs on the agenda that would enable women to be leaders?” Yanz asked. Conference participants here in Brazil are working to develop strategies to do just that.
Plenary
Conclusions Panel: What Did We Learn/Where Do We Go From Here?
Moderator
Shawna Bader-Blau, Executive Director, Solidarity Center
Panelists
• Dorothy Sue Cobble, Distinguished Professor, Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations and the Department of History, Rutgers University, U.S.
• Chidi King, Equality Department, International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC)
• Lisa McGowan, Solidarity Center Senior Specialist for Gender Equality
• Gertrude Mtsweni, Gender Coordinator, Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU)
Shawna Bader-Blau convened the final panel by saying the plenary was a time to “think together about what really has affected us,” and noted that “this is a room filled with action and we want to give some space and time for this room to reflect.”
She then asked Dorothy Sue Cobble for a historian’s perspective on the issues discussed during the conference.
Cobble began by saying it was “really inspiring for me to be here for two days with this group of women leaders.” One recurring issue hit her hard: “I have been stunned by the violence people experience every day.” She then explained that the prevailing academic theories of collective mobilization are outmoded and predicted the emergence of a new and stronger collaboration between the women’s movement and labor movement. She noted that “unions have changed … and are more open to partnerships.”
She also mentioned the importance of documenting stories and sharing them globally. “We’re really at this very exciting moment of partnership between the women’s movement and unions. Many of the partner groups have changed and are open to unions, and many unions have changed, and are open to partner groups.”
She recalled several phrases she will take back with her from the conference:
• We are not alone. We have to work in alliance.
• We are not defeated. She noted this point was repeatedly made in discussions on organizing.
• We are not going away. “Iris (Munguía), said it poignantly when she pointed to the book written by the banana workers. It’s very important to write down our stories for future generations.”
Gertrude Mtsweni listed some of her key takeaways from the conference, including the importance of organizing women workers in the informal economy, the value of partnerships and solidarity and the need to eliminate poverty and child labor. “Child labor is a key enemy,” she said.
Lisa McGowan noted the common thread running through the conference workshops: “We want to come as a whole person but don’t know how to do it.” Doing so, she said, means connecting and integrating the heart, mind and body, and this takes courage. “If you have been traumatized, chances are you have been cut off from one another,” she said. “Our consciousness around that and our gentleness around that are really important.” McGowan discussed the importance of adopting a strategic approach toward achieving gender equality, one that deserves attention and resources, and emphasized the need to start by understanding ourselves rather than with a predetermined answer.
Chidi King began by saying the conference was “a wonderful reminder of just what a powerful movement we are. It’s been inspiring to see that women are leading our movement. Women are transforming our movement.”
She noted that global union organizations, including the ITUC which is now headed by a woman, have increased the number of women in leadership positions. But “leadership is not only about occupying those decision-making positions,” she said. “It’s about leading your peers.”
King then discussed the role of the ITUC in promoting gender equality. She explained that a core aspect of ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow’s change agenda is women’s role in the trade union movement. She also mentioned the ITUC’s gender equality initiatives, including the Decisions for Life campaign to empower young women and the Labor Rights for Women program.
Shawna Bader-Blau then asked conference participants to share one new insight they gained from the conference about how they do their work and why it’s important.
Participants from around the world then shared their reflections from the conference. Common themes included the universality of the struggle for gender equality, the need to move beyond discussion to action, the importance of strategic thinking and the value of educating and empowering young women union leaders and activists. Participants also emphasized the importance of building and maintaining alliances at the national, regional and global levels.
“Women globally have the same problems. I thought it was just us here in Liberia,” said Oretha Tarnue, vice president of the United Workers Union of Liberia. “One of the things we can do is to take action.” For instance, “in the workplace, men also have problems, but they are afraid to challenge management. Women aren’t. We have to bring (women and men) together.”
Maria Auxiliadora dos Santos, from the Força Sindical’s Women Secretary, urged everyone to take everything from the conference and “put it into practice—don’t keep it on paper.”
Iris Munguía, coordinator for the Latin American Banana and Agro-Industrial Unions, also noted the strength she derived from recognizing the challenges she faced are shared around the world. “It was positive for me to see that we have problems in common. But we are all working on strategies to solve them.” She said she planned to take what she learned at the conference back to Latin America, especially for her work among banana plantation workers. “The space that we have here is a good space. We’re taking away new alliances to strengthen our work with women.”
Rosa Julia Perez Aguilar, secretary of Women’s, Child and Adolescent Affairs at the Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Empresa Camposal in Peru, said she will take the examples she heard at the conference back to her brothers and sisters in Peru. “These are things one learns not to keep but to share.” She concluded her remarks by saying, “We are strong women. We have the capacity to lead.”
Julia Quiñonez, a representative of women workers in Mexico´s maquiladoras and part of the Comité Fronterizo de Obreras, said she was “deeply impressed by the degree of inclusivity. These gatherings have to happen and keep happening.”
Eunice Maria Dias Wolf, secretary of Social Development in the City of Canoas, Brazil, said “in these two days, we exercised a method of refection and exchange of our experiences so we understand better our difficulties.” The next step, she said, is transformation, and Dias Wolf suggested the Solidarity Center follow up with an international training project for women.
In addition, conference attendees raised the issue of the role of men in promoting gender equality.
Nhlanhla Mabizela, Solidarity Center program officer for South Africa, said what he took away from the conference is the “clear roadmap how patriarchy hurts women.” But patriarchy also hurts men. “What is it that we’re doing as men? Are we blind to see that patriarchy also hurts us?” He suggested that men needed to listen to discussions about these issues to facilitate progress. “I think it’s about time that we as men begin to embrace gender equality, particularly in regard to emotional investment. We’re afraid to show that part of us that shows we care.”
Michael Merrill, dean of the Harry van Arsdale Jr. Center for Labor Studies at the State University of New York Empire State College, commented that empowering women is a way to transform the labor movement. “I believe labor needs to be transformed and women are key to that. When only men are involved in the labor movement, “we’re working with one hand behind our back,” he said. “We’re half as strong as we could be.” With women as partners in the struggle for worker rights, “we’ll be twice as strong.” Regarding the prevalence of violence against women, a topic which emerged in conference discussions, he reminded participants of the familiar phrase, “an injury to one is an injury to all.”
Bader-Blau concluded by challenging participants to maintain and realize a vision for a better society and a better world.
“The global labor economy is designed by power elites, designed to keep us down. The labor movement fights that. What I heard these last two days is that everyone is fighting.”
Workshop
Women Workers Organizing: Examples from India, Brazil and Liberia
Panelists
• Geeta Koshti, Coordinator, Legal Department, Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), India
• Sonia Maria Dias, Ph.D, Sector Specialist, WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing), Brazil
• Creuza Maria Oliveira, President, Domestic Workers Federation, Brazil
• Oretha Tarnue, Vice President, United Workers Union of Liberia
Moderator
Neha Misra, Senior Specialist, Solidarity Center, Migration; Human Trafficking
Geeta Koshti first described the origin of the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), which formed in 1972 and now includes 1.7 million women workers throughout India. For the past 25 years, SEWA has organized women in the bidi trade, a home-based occupation in which women roll cigarettes. The bidi trade is the only one in the informal sector covered by national labor law, and bidi workers have access to social services through the Bidi Welfare Board.
Koshti then overviewed the association’s approach to campaigns, which include both short- and long-term efforts. Campaigns are run at the local, state and national levels and have sought to boost wages, streamline worker access to social services and improve national laws for home-based workers.
Sonia Maria Dias introduced herself as a sociologist who focuses on garbologists (academics who study “clean” garbage collected by people who go through others’ trash to learn more about the group). Dias indicated that there are millions of people worldwide who focus on solid waste management and are commonly known as waste pickers. The majority are women–in Brazil, for example, some 50 percent are women and in India, 80 percent are women. Waste pickers are a vital component of the informal economy and their work benefits the environment. In Brazil waste pickers now can be formally hired.
Dias’ research takes a gendered approach to waste picking. For example, she analyzes women’s access to certain recyclables and women’s access to positions of authority among waste pickers. Sonia’s assessment is that waste pickers are generally invisible, and women waste pickers are even more invisible.
Dias, a professor at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil, conducted a participatory research project focused on women waste pickers—their workplaces, their lives and their place in the national economy. The project sought to provide women waste pickers with tools to work toward equality in the workplace and in their personal lives and well as increase women’s leadership roles in the associations and empower them economically. The participatory rapid assessment project was based on Paulo Freire’s approach to popular education. (Freire, a 20th century Brazilian educator, developed a “pedagogy of the oppressed” which aims to empower people who feel marginalized socially and politically to take control of their own learning to effect social change.)
The project organized workshops for women workers. Findings from the project include the following:
Creuza Maria Oliveira said the domestic workers’ union she represents includes 28 local unions that are affiliated with the Brazil labor federation, Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT). Oliveira described domestic workers as isolated in homes, frequently targets of sexual abuse and suffering from low self-esteem. Domestic workers are trained to be clean, passive and honest. She described domestic workers as part of the working class. Domestic workers face double violence—at their homes and on the job. Domestic workers also face violence at work from other women.
Domestic workers, Oliveira stated, are not educated in politics, and unions involve political action. One reason why it’s important to educate women in politics is that women need to run for political office, Oliveira said. Further, it’s important domestic workers join in campaigns to improve their legal rights. Workers at formal workplaces in Brazil are covered by 36 worker rights on the law books compared with domestic workers, who have only nine legal rights.
In the past 10 years, government policies have begun to address the issue of domestic workers, she said. To support passage of ILO Convention 189 on domestic workers, Brazil government officials took domestic workers to Geneva for the ILO meeting where the Convention was debated.
Official statistics for Brazil show that 7.2 million domestic workers are employed across the nation. In reality, she said, there are more than 8 million, most of whom are women. Men do not like to say they are domestic workers. Domestic workers issues are the following:
• Labor rights
• Social rights
• Decent housing
• Daycare
• Full-time education for children (In Brazil, children are in school only a half day.)
• Traffic/time to travel to work. Because of long commutes, domestic workers get home very late at night.
• Children of domestic workers fall victim to drugs and gangs because they are in the streets with no parent at home.
Former President Lula decreed that domestic workers could legally work only if they are 18 years old or over. In this case, Oliveira said, the law is good, but not enforced. In Brazil, teens and children are still working as domestic workers.
Oretha Tarnue, a former domestic worker, now assists domestic workers form unions in Liberia. During Liberia’s first civil war (1989-1996), when men were threatened, many women, including Tarnue, became the breadwinners for their families. Once in the workforce, Tarnue immediately joined a union. Before the civil war, Tarnue stated, trade unions were not substantive entities and women’s participation in civil society was insignificant and burdened with cultural and traditional stereotypes. The civil wars severely injured people physically, emotionally and mentally. After the second civil war (1999-2003), women took the lead in unions and her union, the United Workers Union of Liberia, is now the fastest growing in the country.
A decent work bill covering domestic workers is now before the Liberian legislature. The lower house has passed it, and passage is pending in the upper house. At present, domestic workers are seen as informal economy workers.
Domestic workers are paid between $21 and $50 per month, which is barely enough to buy a bag of rice. Their human rights are frequently violated.
Tarnue listed the following among the challenges women face in Liberia:
• Cultural stereotypes/prevalent discrimination against women.
• Issues with nursing mothers on plantations.
• Balancing tasks associated with skilled work and family responsibilities.
• Inadequate support from male unionists for women running for elective offices.
• Lack of funding for education/awareness programs on gender equality
Mainstreaming women into male-dominated careers, such as rubber tree nursery work, is a big focus of her union. She said women need scholarships so they can acquire the skills needed for employment in male-dominated trades. She also encourages women to run for elected offices in the union.