This study by the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) and Solidarity Center finds women workers in Morocco’s fertile Meknes region are making big gains in gender equality on the job through their union, the Confédération Démocratique du Travail (CDT).
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Just outside Sri Lanka’s Bandaranaike International Airport, where more than 2 million tourists start their vacations each year, a different reality unfolds in the Katunayake export processing zone (EPZ).
There, thousands of garment workers take their places in factories guarded by electrified fencing to begin long days for little pay, forced to endure grueling production cycles with managers refusing to grant even unpaid sick leave. Sexual harassment and other forms of gender-based violence are a daily part of the job, they say, often with economic repercussions.
“Women are made to stand and work and when engineers fix machines, they touch the women,” says PK Chamila Thushari, program coordinator for the Dabindu Collective union. “When they complain, engineers don’t fix the machines, which means they can’t meet their quota. The only they way they can earn a good living is to hit the targets set by the bonus,” she says, speaking through a translator.
Garment workers are paid a bare $84 a month—or less, if they are employed outside the EPZs—yet apparel exports generated $4.8 billion for Sri Lanka in 2017, a 3 percent increase compared with the previous year. At 47 percent of total exports in 2016, apparel and textiles are the backbone of the country’s trade.
Yet only 2.8 percent of the revenue comes to the garment workers who cut, sew and package clothes for international brands, says Thushari, and most are malnourished, suffer from anemia, and struggle to feed and educate their children. The cost of living for a family of four—without rent—is $549 a month in urban areas like Colombo, near the Katunayake EPZ.
Gender-based violence in garment factories is so common “people have kind of become numb to it.” Credit: Solidarity Center/Sean Stephens
Dabindu (drops of sweat in Sinhalese), launched in 1984 as a local organization to advocate and promote women workers’ rights, transitioned to become a union last year at the request of its members, says Thushari, who has been with the organization for 22 years. In addition to advocating for improved wages, the union is focused on educating women about their rights to a workplace free of gender-based violence.
As is the case at workplaces around the world, Dabindu has found one of the biggest hurdles to addressing sexual harassment and other forms of gender-based violence is women’s fear of reporting it.
Also, “because this happens so often in garment factories, people have kind of become numb to it,” says Thushari. Dabindu creates awareness programs and trains workers to become leaders on the issue. Because workers are fearful of speaking to employers or the police about abusive incidents, the worker-leaders share their experiences with the union, which takes the information to factory management, multinational brands and others so they may address the problem.
Importantly, it took time for Dabindu to develop trust among the workers so they would feel comfortable sharing their experiences with the union, says Thushari.
Since the end of the country’s 26-year civil war in 2009, which claimed roughly 100,000 lives, Tamil women, many widowed, have journeyed from the north for employment in garment factories at Katunayake and other southern areas with Sinhala majorities. Many experience difficulties because they do not understand the language, and garment factories often require Tamil women to meet higher targets, says Thushari.
Dabindu is working to foster better understanding between the Sinhala and Tamil garment workers by holding daylong “youth camps,” bringing the women together in a relaxed setting, and also is sponsoring trips for garment workers to war-torn northern Sri Lanka to enable women see the difficult living conditions there that are driving Tamil women to seek employment far from their homes. The union is expanding its program to offer women in the north a chance to travel to the south.
“Sometimes, workers are in tears when they see the difficult living conditions, and that brings them closer to each other,” says Thushari.
When thousands of farmworkers from Mexico’s coastal state of Baja California waged a 12-week strike in 2015 to protest poverty wages—roughly $4 a day—and poor working conditions like lack of access to water, Abelina Ramírez saw her chance to ensure women’s concerns, such as sexual harassment in the fields, were addressed.
“It’s important for us to get the message out to workers to join the union”—Abelina Ramírez Credit: Solidarity Center/Tula Connell
“I decided to join the national caravan [in 2017] from San Quintín to Mexico City,” says Ramírez. “I joined the coordinating team because neither [of the organizations leading the strike] had a woman leader who could speak to any of these issues, and that’s where I got fully involved,” she says, speaking through a translator. (Ramírez discusses her work here.)
The strike drew international attention to the conditions of the region’s roughly 80,000 workers who pick berries and tomatoes for 160 different agro-industiral companies, and workers ultimately won wage increases, boosting pay from approximately $4 per day to $8-$10.
Ramírez, now alternate secretary of gender equality for the National Independent and Democratic Union of Farmworkers (Sindicato Independiente Nacional Democrático de Jornaleros Agrícolas, SINDJA), was among speakers at the recent Solidarity Center conference in Los Angeles, “Realizing a More Fair Global Food Supply Chain.”
In an interview with the Solidarity Center, Ramírez says workers are still fighting for their original 14 core demands, among which is onsite medical facilities. Workers who are injured or fall ill in the fields must be transported long distances to receive care, and some have died in transit, she says.
Further, despite the wage increase, farmworker pay is still comparable to wages paid in much poorer countries, and farmworkers say a national wage category for them should be created, as exists for carpenters and other professional workers.
“What we’re fighting for is a professional-level salary because we see the work we do—cutting, picking and packing—as part of a professional category, and we’re not being respected,” says Ramírez.
Like many women and men in Mexico’s southern Oaxaca region, Ramirez saw an opportunity to improve her livelihood when a labor recruiter showed up promising good wages for picking berries and tomatoes far north, in San Quintín.
“When there are no options because of poverty, we end up migrating,” says Ramírez, who has picked berries for 13 years.
Most mothers who migrate for work take their children but, once in the fields, find no public services and no child care, and “that’s when you realize this crude reality of what moving has meant—you can’t provide for your children and give them an education,” she says. Unable to afford decent housing on the low wages they are paid, many farm laborers are forced to live in company or government encampments—each family occupying a space between 9 square feet and 13 square feet, with shared bathrooms and laundry.
“That’s why it’s important for us to get the message out to workers to join the union, she says. “It’s important for them to realize that together, we can join forces and go up against the employers and the government and get a better life for ourselves and our families.”
Ramírez holds workshops on labor rights, including gender equality, and now seven women trained by the union meet with women farmworkers to encourage them to take part. She reaches the women by “starting with issues that matter to them: They care about child care, medical attention,” says Ramírez.
As she experienced during the 2015 strike, when “everybody joined, my family, my children joined, we got our signs and we went out,” Ramirez says “we knew that we could achieve something if we all went out.”
And that’s why Ramírez sees union organizing as fundamental to improving worker rights.
“Because coming together, through our unity, we’re going to achieve the changes we’re striving for.”
A global regulation addressing gender-based violence at work is one step closer to reality following a 10-day meeting of workers, their unions and representatives from business and government—but much work must yet be done to ensure its passage.
Participants at the recent International Labor Organization (ILO) conference in Geneva, Switzerland, reached consensus on the need for a convention and recommendation to provide guidance to member states, employers and unions in implementing a global standard to end violence and harassment at work. ILO conventions are legally binding international treaties that may be ratified by member states, and recommendations serve as non-binding guidelines.
Momentum for an ILO convention covering gender-based violence at work follows years of advocacy by the global union movement, an effort led by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).
Leading up to the most recent negotiations, Solidarity Center partners urged their unions, governments and employers to publicly support a binding ILO convention on violence and harassment at work that includes gender-based violence. Their efforts clearly moved countries such as the governments of Tunisia and Cambodia, which both indicated strong support.
With Solidarity Center support, more than a dozen workers—from Brazil, Cambodia, The Gambia, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Palestine, South Africa, Swaziland, Tunisia and Zimbabwe—participated in the conference. Several took lead roles in the negotiations as part of the workers’ group, including sisters from Kenya and Zimbabwe who ensured gender-based violence remained the focus of discussions.
Violence and Harassment at Work Violates Basic Human Rights
The discussion included defining violence and harassment and assessing whether the final outcome should be a binding convention and a recommendation or only a recommendation.
Marie Clarke Walker, secretary-treasurer of the Canadian Labour Congress, represented the workers’ group. In committee negotiations among workers, employers and government representatives, Walker stated that violence and harassment at work constitutes a serious human rights violation, one that is incompatible with decent work, and one that impinges on the ability to exercise other fundamental labor rights.
Violence and harassment at work affect all occupations and sectors of the economy, including formal and informal work settings, Clark said. She also linked the importance of the negotiations to the current moment, including the #Metoo movement which has demonstrated the prevalence of violence and harassment at work and how it is both tolerated and endured, including by an especially high percentage of women seeking to obtain or maintain employment.
Walker also noted that while violence and harassment affects everyone at work, not everyone is affected in the same way nor on the same scale. Specifically, women and gender nonconforming people experience violence and harassment in disproportionate numbers, underlying the need for the gender dimensions of violence and harassment to be addressed in the instruments.
Countries Confirm Support for GBV at Work Convention
Representatives of several country members, including the European Union and its member states, confirmed their support for development of an effective ILO convention and emphasized that it must promote a gender-responsive approach, focus on prevention and enforcement measures, and improve protections for victims from intimidation and further assault.
The governments of African countries and Mexico also expressed support for a convention and recommendation. Speaking on behalf of the Africa group, the government of Uganda said a convention would leave no doubt about the international community’s commitment to influence domestic legislation.
Mexico’s representative observed that while both women and men were subject to harassment in the workplace, women were experiencing a higher vulnerability due to unfavorable labor market conditions. Further, international legal instruments should seek a general empowerment of women in the workplace, including with regard to sustainable development.
Employers do not want to see violence and harassment in the workplace, said Alana Matheson, the employer’s representative and deputy director of Workplace Relations at the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Matheson noted that everyone has responsibilities for preventing violence and harassment as well as a right to work in an environment free from violence and harassment.
With the ILO’s final negotiations set for June 2019, workers, unions and our allies will be looking to build on the successes of this year’s committee meeting and negotiations to ensure the strong support by employers, member countries and workers for the need to prevent and address violence and harassment at work results in an inclusive convention and recommendation.
The final convention and recommendation must include a broad definition of violence and harassment, one that includes gender-based violence and an inclusive definition of worker and work where employers, member states and unions share obligations and responsibilities to prevent and address violence and harassment.
Robin Runge, Solidarity Center senior gender specialist, participated in the ILO conference.
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.
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.
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.”
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.”