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.
Women Farmworkers Struggle to Care for Their Children
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.
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.”
Despite modest gains in some regions in the world over the past two decades, women are more likely than men to become and remain unemployed, have fewer chances to participate in the workforce and often must accept dangerous, low-paying jobs, according to Women at Work: Trends 2016, a recent report by the International Labor Organization (ILO).
But when women join together to win living wages and decent working conditions through a union or association, women empower themselves and each other in the struggle for economic fairness for themselves, their families and their communities.
“Labor and community organizing can shift power relationships, change working conditions and address barriers to full and equal participation in the labor market,” according to a new report by the AFL-CIO, Solidarity Center and Rutgers University’s Center for Women’s Global Leadership, “Transforming Women’s Work: Policies for an Inclusive Economic Agenda.”
With Solidarity Center support, women around the world are joining and leading unions, advocating for themselves and their co-workers and standing up for the rights of all workers worldwide.
Despite modest gains in some regions in the world over the past two decades, women are more likely than men to become and remain unemployed, have fewer chances to participate in the workforce and often must accept dangerous, low-paying jobs, according to Women at Work: Trends 2016, a recent report by the International Labor Organization (ILO).
But when women join together to win living wages and decent working conditions through a union or association, women empower themselves and each other in the struggle for economic fairness for themselves, their families and their communities.
“Labor and community organizing can shift power relationships, change working conditions and address barriers to full and equal participation in the labor market,” according to a new report by the AFL-CIO, Solidarity Center and Rutgers University’s Center for Women’s Global Leadership, “Transforming Women’s Work: Policies for an Inclusive Economic Agenda.”
With Solidarity Center support, women around the world are joining and leading unions, advocating for themselves and their co-workers and standing up for the rights of all workers worldwide.
Nyaradzo Tavarwisa makes and sells peanut butter for her home-based business, Dovi World in Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe. Nyaradzo, a member of the Zimbabwe Chamber of Informal Economy Associations (ZCIEA), a Solidarity Center ally, helps other women ZCIEA members learn the skills involved in the small business. Credit: Solidarity Center/Jemal Countess
Bangladesh garment worker Rina operates a sewing machine at Aliza Fashions Ltd. Rina and her co-workers are among dozens of workers throughout the garment industry who have taken part in Solidarity Center fire safety trainings. Credit: Solidarity Center/Balmi Chisim
This photo of a winding machine driver and construction union member in Kyrgyzstan is among winning images in a 2016 International Women’s Day contest held by the Center on Labor Relations Research (CISTO). Winning photographs from the event, co-sponsored by the Solidarity Center, were on display at the Federation of Trade Unions of Kyrgyzstan. Credit: Djanaliev Nazar
Kindergarten teacher Khadeja Othman holds a bachelor’s degree from Al Yarmouk University in Jordan and teaches in Ramallah’s Bet Our Al Tahta village. As a member of the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions, Othman has taken part in many training workshops sponsored by her union and the Solidarity Center. Credit: Solidarity Center/Alaa Salih
A single mother of three and a union steward with the mine workers union, Ruth Rivera, 45, travels through the Fénix mine in La Paz, Mexico. With Solidarity Center support, Rivera and her female co-workers formed Women Miners of Steel to give women a greater voice at the workplace. Credit: Solidarity Center/Robert Armocida
Lucy Nyangasi, 26, a domestic worker in Nairobi is a member of the Kenya Union of Domestic, Hotel, Educational Institutions, Hospitals and Allied Workers (KUDHEIHA), which is helping informal economy workers get rights on the job. Credit: Solidarity Center/Kate Holt
Thein Thein Aye, 23 and Khin Thit Lwin, 30, work at Shwe Mi Plastics Factory in Yangoon, where they are paid $135 per month. Both moved to the city from their villages, where jobs are scarce, and recently joined the Confederation of Trade Unions of Myanmar, a long-time Solidarity Center ally. Credit: Solidarity Center/Jeanne Hallacy
In Harare, where Dzidai Magada Mwarozva is director of Human Resources at Destiny Electronics, the National Union of Metal and Allied Industries in Zimbabwe (NUMAIZ), a Solidarity Center partner, represents office workers and truck drivers. Credit: Solidarity Center/Jemal Countess
Filipina domestic workers who migrated to Jordan for work demonstrate their rights under Jordanian law after taking part in a Solidarity Center-sponsored workshop on combatting trafficking in persons. Credit: Solidarity Center/Francesca Ricciardone
Palm oil workers in San Martin, Peru, bike the Palma del Espino planation where they work and live with their families. The workers in San Martin are represented by two unions, and the Solidarity Center works with them to provide training and education for worker support on the job. Credit: Solidaity Center/Oscar Durand
In Sri Lanka, nurses have a voice on the job through the Government Nursing Officers Association (GNOA), a Solidarity Center ally. Credit: Solidarity Center/Pushpa Kumara
Marisol Rodriguez, who sells medicinal herbs at a San Cristobal market in the Dominican Republic, is among street informal economy workers the Solidarity Center reaches in 35 countries through training to build economic empowerment. Credit: Ricardo Rojas/Solidarity Center
Rural women contribute roughly half of the world’s food, and are especially vulnerable to workplace exploitation. In South Africa, cabbage planters and other farm workers have a voice on the job through the Food and Allied Workers Union. Credit: Solidarity Center/Jemal Countess
Algerian nurses at the Hôpital Ben Aknoun are represented by SNAPAP, the country’s largest public-employee union. The Solidarity Center supports SNAPAP’s work with unemployed youth, marginalized and vulnerable women workers and contract (temporary) workers. Credit: Solidarity Center/Zoubir Aksouh
Five black women activists representing the U.S. labor movement, the Black Women’s Roundtable and other causes working to promote women’s empowerment and gender equality, traveled to Kenya last week to connect with union women from the Central Organization of Trade Unions-Kenya (COTU-K) and the broader community to examine structural barriers that disproportionately affect women and other marginalized groups, and explore remedies to those barriers.
The group visited with union leaders of COTU-K, Kenya’s labor federation, and with young worker activists in the informal economy, workers and organizers at a flower farm, managers and union representatives at a motor assembly plant of an international automotive corporation and community organizations and NGOs. Participants say the one-on-one connections reveal a labor movement that is responding to women’s demands for a seat at the table.
“The labor movement in Kenya has really embraced the idea around building power for women and building programs around empowering women,” says Salandra Benton, Florida AFL-CIO community organizing director.
Kenya Unions, Civil Society, Working to Promote Gender Equality
The women, who traveled to Nairobi, Naivasha and rural Samburu County, say they found a vibrant and effective civil society that is pursuing a progressive agenda promoting gender equality. They exchanged experiences and strategies with several nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and community groups, including HAART, Women for Women, The Centre for Rights, Education and Awareness (CREAW) and the Kenya Youth Empowerment Network (KYEN).
U.S.-based community activist LaTosha Brown predicts that additional resources will bring even more progress. “When I saw the passion and commitment with the unions, women and young people, I also see … tremendous potential for significant impact for U.S. civil society groups and foundations,” she says. Brown is the project director at Grantmakers for Southern Progress.
Sheila Tyson, city councilperson in Birmingham, Ala., notes that women in Kenya have achieved significant political progress toward representative equity because the country has set aside legislative seats for women. “We don’t have that in the U.S.,” she adds. A legislative solution to low female representation in legislative bodies is important, she says, otherwise, women get little respect: “Men think we are mantelpieces.”
Kenya Activists Working to End Gender-based Violence
Gender-based violence at work and in society, a focus of the exchange, is beginning to be addressed in Kenya by trade unions and NGOS, as well as in the political realm through advocacy for legislative strategies.
“It was shocking to see how [gender-based violence] shows itself in very similar fashions around the world,” says Brown, adding that she was very encouraged to find COTU-K taking on domestic worker issues—which include sexual and physical violence on the job—as a key concern.
The women say they were heartened to see efforts to combat gender-based violence. Says Tyson: “People like Rose Omamo and the community activists are holding people’s feet to the fire.” Omamo, general secretary of the Amalgamated Union of Kenya Metal Workers and chair of COTU-K’s Women’s Committee, met with the U.S. delegation. She is the first woman to be elected general secretary of a trade union in that country.
Celeste Faison, organizing coordinator for the U.S. National Domestic Worker Alliance (NDWA), and Erica Strong, business owner, author and motivational speaker, also joined the delegation. The Solidarity Center implemented the exchange with a grant from the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
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