On a warm, dusty day on the Deccan plateau in April 1994, I joined Kailash Satyarthi’s Bharat Yatra, (Indian Journey), a group of 150 child labor activists part-way through its march from the southern tip of India to the heart of New Delhi, where it would arrive five months later. I didn’t realize it then, but I was witnessing the prototype of the movement that Kailash would take to a global scale four years later, and result in the biggest single step forward in history in the cause to abolish child labor.
It was hard to visualize 24 years ago that these initial attempts to mobilize masses of people behind a broad social movement would build to this moment today—a 20th anniversary commemoration at the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) annual Conference in Geneva of the Global March, which ushered in ILO Convention 182 aimed at eliminating the worst forms of child labor.
ILO conventions set a global standard for labor rights that UN member countries are expected to adopt and enforce. Not all countries are willing to do so. But Convention 182 is now the most ratified convention in ILO history, with 181 signatory countries. As one diplomatic observer in the early 1990s said to me, looking at the burgeoning activity in India, “Kailash has built a movement—now he needs to build an organization.”
Build one he did. The Global March Against Child Labour was formed 20 years ago specifically to mobilize people worldwide to lobby for adoption of Convention 182. And finally recognizing his decades-long campaign to abolish child labor, the Nobel Committee awarded Kailash the Peace Prize in 2014.
At the commemoration this week, attended by hundreds of delegates from governments, employers and trade unions, Kailash was joined by ILO Director General, Guy Ryder, representatives of workers’ and employers’ groups, and two very special guests: Basu Rai, a former child laborer who, as a 9-year-old, was one of the original marchers who came to Geneva 20 years ago, and Zulema Lopez, a former child farm worker in the United States, who is now earning a university student.
Opening the program, Ryder noted to Kailash, “I personally remember the moment, the incredible moment 20 years ago, when you led children from around the world into the ILC to press for Convention 182.” He pointed out that even though child labor has been reduced by tens of millions since that time, 152 million children are still working, with practically no reduction in the 5–11 year age range. Indeed, hazardous child labor for that age cohort has actually increased. With the number of children injured and killed each year in hazardous labor conditions, Ryder said, “If this were a war, we’d be talking a lot more about it.”
Basu, in an impassioned address, talked about how he was orphaned at 4, joined a street gang and became a child slave before being rescued by Kailash and his activists. “I remember coming here 20 years ago and climbing on the desks and raising the slogan, ‘No more tools for tiny hands, we want books, we want toys.’ My childhood was snatched away. I’m coming here today, but I’m still afraid. I’m still afraid—and I’m a father to a 2-month-old daughter—that the world is not safe for the children.”
Zulema told the assembly: “I was a third-generation farm worker family. I first went to work in the fields when I was 7. I missed school. It was normal for me to wake up at 5:30 in the morning, put on a T-shirt, and work for hours in the hot sun, my back aching from carrying 30 pounds of cucumbers.”
In winding up the event, Kailash reminisced, “I remember that day when I walked in with the core marchers of the Global March who were allowed to come into the ILO, which was the first time in history the ILO opened its doors to the most exploited and most vulnerable… We were marching from exploitation to education.”
While there has been progress, much work needs to be done to eliminate child labor, as envisioned by the UN-adopted Sustainable Development Goals, by 2025.
“Child labor is not an issue that will be solved by someone else; it’s up to you personally,” said Kailash. “It’s urgent. The childhood of children today can’t wait. And you have to believe it’s possible. It’s personal, it’s urgent, it’s possible.”
Timothy Ryan is the Chairperson of the Global March Against Child Labour and the Asia Regional Director for the Solidarity Center.
Released today, the two-minute video highlights the structural foundations of gender-based violence at work, a systemic gendered imbalance between employers and workers that enables employers to get away with unsafe working conditions and other worker abuses. Although gender-based violence is one of the most prevalent human rights violations in the world, not enough is done to prevent it, especially at the workplace.
Starting May 28, workers, employers and government officials will debate a proposed International Labor Organization (ILO) convention (regulation) that would address violence and harassment at work.
Workers and their unions are championing its adoption with a strong focus on the gender dimension of violence.
The video ends with a call to action tojoin the campaignfor passage of a gender-based violence at work convention, because “Violence is not part of the job for any of us!”
Women union activists and their allies in Morocco and Tunisia celebrated International Women’s Day this week with events that highlighted the need for a global standard to address gender-based (GBV) violence at work.
“Violence is escalating dramatically. Without an international agreement and deterrent laws that protect women at home, in society and in workplaces, we cannot move forward,” says Saida Ouaid, a member of the Executive Office of the Democratic Confederation of Labor (CDT) in Morocco.
Ouaid and other women union leaders and allies took part in a March 6 event “Toward an International Convention for the Elimination of Gender-Based Violence in the Workplace” at the Parliament in Rabat, in coordination with Morocco’s Secretariat of Equity and Equality.
Touriya Lahrech (far left),coordinator of the CDT’s Women Department, joins women union members to discuss an ILO convention addressing gender-based violence at work. Credit: Mohamed Yakkane
In Tunisia, 100 union members from across the country gathered for a March 8 event where they also discussed the need for passage of an ILO convention on gender-based violence at work.
“The gathering is an opportunity for women to stand up for their struggles to defend their rights and freedom, and to promote equality and an environment free of violence,” Samir Al-Shefi, deputy general-secretary of the General Union of Tunisian Workers (UGTT) Women, Youth and Association, said in opening the event.
Naima Hammami, one of two women on the UGTT’s executive office, paid tribute to the struggles of Tunisian, Palestinian, Syrian and Arab women around the world. The event was sponsored by UGTT’s Women, Youth and Association Department, together with the Solidarity Center.
Gender-Based Violence ‘Widespread at Work’
At both the Morocco and Tunisia events, experts discussed preliminary findings on gender-based violence at work based on participatory field research sponsored by the Solidarity Center and CDT in Morocco and the UGTT in Tunisia.
Discussing the research in Morocco, Najat Al-Razi, a gender specialist and sociologist, says gender-based violence is “widespread in the world of work,” and “the most common form of violence against women in workplaces is sexual harassment.”
Asma al-Marani, a member of the Moroccan Union of Labor and the Arab Trade Union Confederation, pointed out that her union receives daily complaints about violence at work from women working in the precarious and informal economy.
CDT leaders noted that as part of the global campaign for an international convention on the elimination of violence in the world of work, the union will continue meeting with a range of allies at the grassroots level until the Geneva Conference with a campaign to push the government to support the ILO draft convention, supplemented by a guiding document implementing the convention.
Representatives from the Njda Center, the Jusour Association, the Women’s Labor Union, the Association of Women for Equality and Democracy (Afed) and other union leaders and journalists also took part in the Rabat event.
Sorting olives, picking peaches and cultivating fields across a vast agro-industrial complex outside Meknes, Morocco, Hayat Khomssi says women workers like her once did not have access to higher-skilled jobs and leadership positions. But after she and her co-workers took part in Solidarity Center gender equality trainings and other skills-building workshops, more than 1,000 farm workers at the Les Domaines Brahim Zniber farm in 2015 negotiated their first collective bargaining agreement.
“Now we have achieved a similar status to that of the men,” she says, speaking through a translator. “Now women are able to be supervisors, team leaders, and are able to do pruning as well. Now they are equal to men in term of tasks but also in terms of pay.”
This year, International Women’s Day draws attention to the rights and activism of rural women like Khomssi and her co-workers, echoing the priority theme of next week’s 62nd session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in New York City.
Celebrated annually on March 8, International Women’s Day this year builds on the current #MeToo movement for women’s rights, equality and justice, with women union activists and their allies holding marches, taking part in social media campaigns and hosting events around the globe to call for gender equality in wages, working conditions, political representation and more.
Follow UN Women’s Day events on Twitter with the hashtag #TimeIsNow.
Women’s Empowerment through Collective Bargaining
Morocco farm women will be among several rural women union activists discussing their advancements through gender equality training and collective bargaining on a Solidarity Center panel at the CSW, “Rural Agricultural Women Workers Organizing to Increase Equality and Empowerment.” They will be joined by Ayat Al Bakr, a Jordanian agricultural worker.
A key part of Solidarity Center gender equality training involves exploring strategies for addressing gender-based violence at work. Gender-based violence (GBV) is one of the most prevalent human rights violations in the world—yet not enough is done to prevent it, especially at the workplace.
Globally, after years of campaigning by workers and their unions, the International Labor Organization (ILO) is negotiating a standard addressing gender-based violence at work. Workers around the world could have access to a binding international standard covering gender-based violence at work after it is finalized. The Solidarity Center is working with the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), which is coordinating the global union campaign for its passage. Find out how you can get involved.
Following years of campaigning by domestic workers and their allies across Brazil, the government in recent days ratified the International Labor Organization Domestic Workers Convention (No. 189), a binding standard in which domestic workers are entitled to full labor rights, including those covering work hours, overtime pay, safety and health standards and paid leave. Brazil is the twenty-fifth country to ratify Convention 189 and the fourteenth in the Americas region.
Since the ILO passed the convention in 2011, the National Federation of Domestic Workers (FENATRAD), the National Confederation of Retail and Service Workers (CONTRACS) and the Central Union of Workers (CUT) were among unions pushing for its ratification, ultimately securing 1.2 million signatures urging the government to ratify the measure.
In a statement celebrating ratification, FENATRAD also vows to continue in the “daily struggle for dignity, valorization and recognition of domestic work, work that moves and creates conditions for other workers to dedicate themselves to productive activities.”
Brazil Economy Slumps as Labor Rights Attacked
The majority of the 7 million domestic workers in Brazil are women, primarily indigenous people and Afro-Brazilians. Brazil’s slumping economy has seen a sharp increase of workers in the informal-sector jobs, with 121,000 domestic worker jobs created between December 2014 and April 2017. At the same time, more than 3.2 million jobs were lost in the formal private sector and some 600,000 jobs lost in the public sector, according to the Department of Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies in Brazil (DIEESE).
Further, more than 9 million people have been pushed below the poverty line since 2015 and 800,000 Brazilians entered the ranks of the unemployed between January and August 2017.
Although workers are celebrating passage of the Domestic Workers Convention, they say a labor reform law passed last year severely weakens their fundamental rights on the job. The law in part dismantles provisions on overtime pay and working hours; creates new forms of precarious contracting, such as “zero-hour” contracts that do not guarantee a minimum wage; and permits pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers to work in unhealthy environments.
The law also disproportionately impacts historically disadvantaged workers, such as women and Afro-Brazilians, who earn less and are much more likely to be unemployed or underemployed than their white male counterparts.
“The convention is to guarantee decent work, unlike the new law that removes basic rights of the worker and the worker,” says Myllena Calazans, a lawyer with FENATRAD.
With Solidarity Center support, FENATRAD recently registered as a national federation, became a member of the International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWF) and is connecting with regional domestic worker organizations.
The Solidarity Center is also assisting the federation in education and outreach, including creation of a crossword puzzle magazine that informs Brazilian domestic workers about their rights. Many domestic workers spend numerous hours on public transportation commuting to and from work and do crossword puzzles during their commutes.
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