As globalization alters working conditions around the
world through the creation of low-wage, precarious jobs and the
elimination of stable public sector positions, workers face systematic
attacks on their rights- especially if they are women. A United Nations
study released in 2000reports women make up nearly 50 percent of the
labor force in almost all regions of the world, and in many work sectors
the majority of low-wage workers are women.
In the low-wage US retail industry, for instance,
women hold approximately 55 percent of jobs, according to the US Bureau
of Labor Statistics. At Wal-Mart stores, 72 percent of hourly workers
are female, according to the United Food an Commercial Workers union,
which also estimates that 70 percent of Wal-Mart's hourly workers have
no company-provided health care coverage because many cannot afford it.
Other examples of working conditions women face around
the world are outlined in Women's Rights Workers' Rights, a new
brochure by the AFL-CIO and the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center, which also
shows how women are fighting back and provides a call to action with a
web link resource section.
Some examples:
Most self-employed workers are women, according to a
2001 study by the International Labor Organization (ILO):
Many women turn to self-employment to survive. In South Africa, as in
many African countries, 90 percent of women work in the "informal
sector" as street vendors, home-based garment workers or home-based
child-care providers-w without benefits or legal protections. South
African women have created the Self- Employed Women's Union, led by
street vendor Zodwa Khumal, to fight for better working conditions- and
have influenced city governments to regulate street trade, taking into
account the social and economic needs of street vendors.
Working women are targets of violence:
During the past decade in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, across the border from
El Paso, Texas, hundreds of young women who toil long hours for low pay
in dangerous maquiladoras (assembly plants) have been raped,
murdered or have disappeared- often on their way to or from work. Julia
Quinonez, a former maquiladora worker, leads the Border Committee
of Women Workers, which is mobilizing community support to bring justice
for victims and protection for workers.
Privatization of government services especially
affects women workers who make up the majority of the health and
education workforces:
When the British government decided to contract out all support
services in Northern Ireland hospitals in the mid 1990's, 11,000
workers, mostly women, faced job loss and harm to their communities'
welfare. Led by Inez McCormack, head of UNISON, the United Kingdom's
largest public employee union, the workers ensured the hospital would
continue to serve the community-and developed a new generation of women
leaders.
In many countries around the world, women are the
majority of workers in sweatshops according to UNITE:
In Indonesia, for example, women work approximately 708 hours a week,
for 16 cents an hour, in apparel sweatshops. After a young union
organizer, Dita Sari, led 20,000 striking workers in a 1996 nonviolent
march to protect working conditions, she was sentenced to five years in
prison, where she continued to lead workers. She was released three
years later after international workers' rights groups and other
organizations rallied to her side. Today, Sari is president of the
National Front for Indonesian Workers' Struggle.
When low-wage American women workers organize, they
gain power: In Las Vegas in May 2002,
20,000 hotel workers- Culinary Workers Union/Hotel Employees and
Restaurant Employees Local 226 members, primarily female housekeepers
and waitresses- filled a university arena and overwhelmingly voted to
strike to protect their health care and limit housekeeping workloads.
Faced with such solidarity, management agreed to the strongest contract
in the industry. With the support of former housekeeper and Local 22
president Geoconda Arguello-Kline, the union has become a powerful voice
in the region's economy and has created stable middle-class jobs for
thousands of working families.
Women union activists seeking to improve workplace
conditions shared strategies at the 8th World Women's
Conference of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU)
last month in Melbourne, Australia. AFL-CIO Executive Vice President
Linda Chavez-Thompson led the AFL-CIO delegation to the conference.
Topping the agenda: developing organizing strategies to reach out to
women, who currently make up 40 percent of the approximately 13 million
members of AFL-CIO affiliated unions and about the same proportion of
the ICFTU'S 156 million membership, says Gloria Johnson, IUE-CWA women's
activity coordinator and president of the Coalition of Labor Union
Women, and AFL-CIO constituency group.
"Joining a union is the best way to address the
problems facing women and to develop solutions that resolve our issues,"
says Johnson.
