Dec 14, 2012
When Kona, a textile worker in Bangladesh, tried to help her co-workers win better conditions on the job, she was harassed to the point where she and her husband were forced into hiding. But through the assistance of the garment workers’ union federation, which negotiated a resolution with management, Kona ultimately resumed her life and work.
“Later, I could join my work and go back to my home with BIGUF’s (Bangladesh Independent Garment Workers Union Federation) help,” she said. “I am continuing my struggle and will continue it until the last day of my life.”
Now general secretary of Masco Industries Ltd. Workers Union, which was formed in late 2011, Kona took part in BIGUF’s Eighth Biannual Convention and Council in Chittagong. Some 500 delegates gathered for the December 7 convention.
Some 280 women were among the participants, who included leaders from national garment workers federations, the Oil and Gas Workers Federation, Transcom Beverage Workers and Employees Union, and the Workers Association of Chittagong EPZ factories, along with allies such as labor lawyers.
The memory of the 112 Tazreen workers who died in last month’s factory fire infused the convention, which opened with a moment of silence to pay tribute to them and to other deceased workers and union leaders.
The conference focused on organizing and forming unions, which in the wake of deadly fires at Tazreen and other garment factories, is especially needed at the factory level, said BIGUF President Moriom Akter. She asked that “all our colleagues from other federations emphasize forming unions,” a call to action all union leaders said they planned to follow.
Discussing how the Tazreen fire highlighted the need for union organizing to challenge factory owners who did not follow the nation’s job safety laws, Rintu Barua pointed out that “it is always the workers who are arrested when they protest.” Barua, the general secretary of Global Garments Ltd. Workers and Employees Union, a BIGUF affiliate, added that “the owners are never questioned. Nobody ask them why the workers of his or her factory are protesting.”
Ruhul Amin, general secretary of Bangladesh Federation of Workers Solidarity, urged workers to refuse to work in factories where the fire escape routes are locked by management.
Ultimately, preventing death and injury on the job means workers—whose lives are at risk and who know best how dangerous their workplace can be—must be able to assert their rights, organize unions with their co-workers, raise safety concerns and demand better working conditions according to their best judgment.
As Moriom told convention delegates, “Unions make us strong.”
Dec 12, 2012
Bangladeshi garment workers no longer are forced to stay on the job for literally weeks without a break and employers’ physical and verbal abuse has decreased—but significant improvements, especially in factory safety, remain to be made in the country’s important garment industry, several garment union leaders told a high ranking U.S. State Department official last weekend.
Eight women from unions and workers’ rights organizations recently discussed factory working conditions with Melanne Verveer, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues, during a meeting at the Solidarity Center in the capital, Dhaka.
Noting the recent tragic deaths of 112 Bangladeshi garment workers, Verveer asked about firefighting equipment in factories.
“Although there is some firefighting equipment, we are not familiar with it and the training is not adequate,” said Pushpo, a sewing machine operator at Natural Apparels Ltd. The workers said management sets up fire extinguishers in factories to show the buyers but does not instruct workers in how to use them. Further, said Solidarity Center Country Program Director Alonzo Suson, “Although the representative of the buyers claim that they conduct unannounced inspection, somehow management always knows when the monitoring team will arrive in the factory.” As one worker told Verveer, management tells workers what to say to factory inspectors and, in a comment that generated laughter, added that “even the toilets are sprayed with perfume.”
Those meeting with Verveer included five factory workers and leaders of the two leading garment worker federations, the Bangladesh Independent Garment Union Federation (BIGUF) and the Bangladesh Garments and Industrial Workers Federation (BGIWF). Kalpona, a representative from the Bangladesh Center for Workers Solidarity (BCWS), a Solidarity Center partner, also took part.
The workers told Verveer that Bangladesh has made substantial progress in eliminating child labor. “When I started work in the factory, I was 9 or 10 years old,” said BIGUF General Secretary Morium Akter. “Now, the situation is different. Factories are strictly following the ‘no child labor’ policy.”
Although eradicating child labor is a big step forward, the workers say they see an ominous development. Increasingly, the government is aligning with factory owners to prevent workers from forming unions, a key step in their efforts to improve working conditions. Shumi, a sewing machine operator of Pastel Apparels Ltd., said she and her co-workers had submitted a registration certificate to the government, but it was denied. In the past four years, only two unions in Chittagong and one union in Dhaka received a government registration certificate, without which a union is not legally recognized.
Worse, after workers apply to the government for union registration, the government now sends the list of names to the factory, and the workers often are fired. “Now, we cannot differentiate between the owner and government administration,” said Akter. “We are still afraid of owners. Now we are afraid of the government as well.”
The union leaders meeting with Verveer understand that preventing workplace death and injury means workers—whose lives are at risk and who know best how dangerous their workplace can be—must be able to assert their rights, organize unions with their co-workers, raise safety concerns and demand better working conditions according to their best judgment. When Verveer encouraged the women workers to raise their voices to bring positive change to their workplaces, the workers said that with the support of unions and organizations such as BIGUF, BGIWF, BCWS and the Solidarity Center, they feel safe to speak out about safety and health and other key issues on the job.
Dec 12, 2012
Gladys Mnyengeza has been a domestic worker in Cape Town, South Africa, for about 40 years—and knows full well the problems and rewards that come with a job traditionally undervalued and performed by workers at the margins of society. Her experience has made her a tireless advocate for the rights of domestic workers.
Mnyengeza, like domestic workers everywhere, holds down several part-time positions providing critical household support for families. Across the world today, domestic workers like Mnyengeza are mobilizing to promote ratification of the International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 189, Decent Work for Domestic Workers. So far, six countries—Uruguay, the Philippines , Nicaragua, Mauritius, Bolivia and Paraguay—have ratified the convention. Convention 189 goes into force one year after ratification by two countries.
Although Mnyengeza’s work involves juggling schedules and long hours, she also finds time to serve in a leadership position for her union, the South Africa Domestic Service and Allied Workers’ Union (SADSAWU). As a union leader, she is tasked with raising awareness among a new generation of domestic workers about their rights on the job and is helping lead her union in a restructuring process to make it a more effective advocate for a traditionally marginalized group of workers.
Mnyengeza first learned about SADSAWU in 2008 when she sought assistance over a pay issue at South Africa’s Commission for Conciliation, Mediation, and Arbitration, a government agency charged with mediating labor disputes. “I went [to SADSAWU] and I joined that same day,” she said.
The pay issue was resolved, but the stress and tension had an impact on Mnyengeza. She resolved to play a bigger role in SADSAWU to help domestic workers recognize their legal rights and not be intimidated when employers treat them unfairly. As the deputy chairperson of SADSAWU’s Cape Town Branch, she regularly meets with domestic workers in SADSAWU’s office and talks with workers at bus stops and other public places to recruit them into the union. According to Mnyengeza, there was a time when cultural taboos prevented domestic workers from speaking out about workplace issues. Today, despite legal protections and advocates like SADSAWU, many workers still hesitate to speak out about poor job conditions.
“I know they have problems but they don’t want to talk. I know that,” she said. “They come to SADSAWU just to talk about their work, but when they see that we can solve problems, they want to join.”
SADSAWU’s leadership, including national, provincial and local-level leaders like Mnyengeza, met in Cape Town November 15-17 to develop an interim plan to restructure the union, which has struggled in recent years. The Solidarity Center facilitated the meeting, along with the Gender Committee of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). SADSAWU developed a draft constitution at the meeting and crafted a one-year interim plan for restructuring. The plan’s success relies on leaders like Mnyengeza and a new generation of domestic worker leaders across the country.
“My hope is to bring SADSAWU back on top where it needs to be,” Mnyengeza says. “We have so many people who are ready to join the union, they are really coming on.”
Dec 10, 2012
December 10, 2012—Nearly 3,000 trade union leaders have been murdered in Colombia over the past 20 years and the killing continues, with at least 15 unionists murdered so far this year. Yet behind each statistic is an individual, says Colombian lawyer and human rights activist, Yessica Hoyos Morales. Someone much like her father, Jorge Darío Hoyos Franco, a Colombian labor leader, who was assassinated in 2001 by two hired hitmen.
“We are a generation that saw these crimes perpetrated against our parents. The government of Colombia wants them to disappear,” with the killers unprosecuted,” says Hoyos. She recently founded Sons and Daughters Against Impunity and for the Memory of the Fallen, an organization whose members carry on the struggles of those killed or exiled. Hoyos spoke at the Solidarity Center Friday during a multi-city U.S. visit to describe to members of Congress and other decision-makers how the Colombian government has not kept its promise to find and prosecute the killers of trade unionists and other human rights activists.
Today, on the 64th anniversary of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, actions worldwide are commemorating those like Hoyos’s father, a mine worker killed for trying to ensure decent working conditions.
International Human Rights Day is a day to recognize that human rights violations happen when job safety is ignored, as it was when 112 garment workers were killed at the Tazreen factory last month in Bangladesh. It offers a moment to remember how workers can put their lives at risk for walking out on strike, as did the 34 South African miners gunned down by the police earlier this fall.
The Declaration outlines the inalienable rights of all people—the right to freedom of opinion and expression, peaceful assembly and association. Nearly all nations have signed the nonbinding document.
Yet throughout the world, migrant workers who seek to support their families are routinely exploited and abused. Others struggle with no legal protections, such as the millions of workers whose sole livelihood is through the unregulated informal sector. Entire nations, like Bahrain, repress workers who even dare speak out for fair treatment on the job. Some nations, notably Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Eritrea, Sudan and Laos, bar workers from forming unions.
And in Colombia, where the government has not pursued 97 percent of the cases involving murdered trade unionists, Hoyos says she and human rights activists are not killed only because of the international support they receive. Hoyos has testified before Congress and in 2008, received the AFL-CIO George Meany-Lane Kirkland human rights award.
Through Sons and Daughters, Hoyos and others educate school children about the brutal history of their country, one that’s not in the textbooks. They speak out when candidates for public office are tied to human rights violations. And they do so because, as Hoyos says, the murders must be stopped, and they will only stop when the perpetrators—members of the military, government, police and international corporations—are held accountable.
On Human Rights Day, Hoyos’s message is especially resonant. “Multinationals will carry out these practices worldwide if they can get away with it in Colombia.”
Dec 7, 2012
Dozens of leaders of the South African Domestic Service and Allied Workers Union (SADSAWU) gathered recently in Cape Town in a first-ever national conference to plan organizing and advocacy goals.
“Our vision remains to help domestic workers demand their rights,” said SADSAWU General Secretary Myrtle Witbooi. “But we have to restructure, regrow and build a new layer of leadership.” The Solidarity Center facilitated the meeting, and staff held workshops covering organizing strategies and outreach techniques.
Many South African domestic workers have had union representation since the early 1980s. In fact, domestic workers are credited with being among the first groups of workers that originally founded the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the country’s largest labor federation.
But even as SADSAWU has advocated on behalf of South Africa’s domestic workers, it has struggled to organize new members and represent members on a nationwide scale. In recent years, the union’s registration with the South African government has lapsed and COSATU disaffiliated it. These hardships represent the difficulties of maintaining a union structure for low-paid, marginalized workers who labor in individual work environments.
COSATU’s Gender Committee and the Solidarity Center have pledged to work with SADSAWU on a reorganization plan. SADSAWU’s goal is create a sustainable structure and be recognized by the South African government and reaffiliated with COSATU. As a first step, the November national meeting enabled participants to develop a new draft constitution and an interim plan for union operations leading to a full congress in November 2013. As part of the interim plan, SADSAWU is developing improved leadership structures and a communications plan and has set 2013 membership organizing targets for provincial affiliates.
SADSAWU’s reorganization comes at a critical time in South Africa. Strikes in mining and agriculture have sparked a dialogue within the country about the economic livelihoods of South African workers in traditionally low-paid jobs. While South African law contains many protections for domestic workers, SADSAWU is pushing for higher wages as well as for laws that would include them in a state-run pension fund and the nation’s worker compensation system.
The union also is urging the South African government to ratify the International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 189 on Decent Work for Domestic Workers. Although South Africa already has some of the best legal protections for domestic workers on paper, ratification would create a stronger basis for SADSAWU and COSATU to press for improved enforcement of those laws. Further, Witbooi believes that South Africa’s ratification would be seen as a clear sign of leadership on domestic worker rights among countries in the global South, especially in Africa.
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