Women workers lead the struggle for labour rights and equality at work, in unions and society
The NTUI has been deliberating on the women’s issues at the workplace, in unions and in society. In the last two years, the NTUI has been able to focus on organising in sectors dominated by women workers. These initiatives come from a perspective that fundamental changes in the union movement can be made by expanding the base of women workers in unions to enable and sustain women’s leadership. NTUI believes that women, in unpaid and paid work, as women workers, and as women in working families and communities of working people, are a major section of the workforce who are deprived and exploited. In order to be socially transformative, the NTUI must enable its affiliates and both men and women members, to have a specific action and programmes addressing issues of women, as workers, as part of working families and communities of working people.
The 3rd General Council deliberated upon the specific issue of working women and resolved to build a specific campaign to address the issues of working women.
Women and Work
The NTUI recognises the gendered nature work, especially in the informal sector and non-standard work; the discrimination in standard employments faced by women workers; along with policies to promote self-employment for women in order to keep them perpetually out of the ambit of labour laws and social security. Majority of women members of NTUI are in non-standard employments such as rural work including forest work, honorary work, domestic work, garbage collectors, sex work and also in sectors such as the garment industry, construction, plantations, hospital and municipal work.
The issues that have emerged from among experiences of affiliates can broadly be categorised as:
i. Recognition of Work
ii. Discriminations
iii. Work Conditions
iv. Harassment
Recognition of work and its social dimension
Recognition of unpaid household work
The importance of women’s contribution in the domestic sphere for the production and reproduction of labour is not recognised and not given its due importance. Women’s household work may not be waged work but it contributes to the sustenance of the families and so subsidizes the wage cost of the employer and the cost of social reproduction of labour in a capitalist society. The NTUI will undertake a cultural campaign so that the working men recognise this unpaid work and participate in the struggle for socialisation of domestic work and enable participation of the women of their families in political life.
Recognition of families as a social force
The trade union movement does not pay sufficient attention to the context of families and communities of the working class. Yet, this dimension is critical in order to facilitate women’s leadership and to build up trade unions as not just an economic, but also a social force. The NTUI will develop organisational initiatives for brining working class families within its ambit.
Recognition of paid household work
In view of the adoption of the ILO Convention on Domestic work, the NTUI demands that the government brings a separate comprehensive legislation for domestic work that will both recognise and regulate the conditions of work and provide social security for domestic workers.
Recognition of Equal Value for Equal Work
The delivery of key social services of the government today is performed by ‘honorary’ workers who are mostly women – anganwadi workers, ASHA workers, mid-day meal workers, ANMs, contract multipurpose health workers and a majority of para-teachers. Their work is considered ‘voluntary’ and hence remains unrecognised and underpaid.
Decriminalise Sex Work
Sex work borders on being termed ‘illegal’ and hence is completely unregulated with no access to social protection, compounded with social stigma as well as harassment from law enforcers. Though the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act (ITPA) Amendment Bill 2005 and 2007, attempted to criminalise sex work, they were opposed and the Bill was stalled. Such criminalisation of sex work would further weaken the bargaining power of sex workers and their access to law.
Recognition of livelihood rights over natural resources
Majority of rural women are employed in the primary sector and are also primary producers within natural resource based activities such as agriculture, fisheries, and forestry. Their control over productive resources however remains minimal. Modern capitalist development superimposed on traditional hierarchies has further marginalised women leading to dispossession, alienation and lack of control of their means of livelihood, including over natural resources. The struggles by women for the control over productive resources are important. Struggles against land acquisition and struggles for land rights and forest rights form an important part of the work of many affiliates and are enabling women to gain control over productive resources. NTUI must focus on increasing control and share by women over productive resources, while also focusing on their demands as workers.
Discrimination
Wage Discrimination
Sectors employing more women or traditionally identifiable with women are typically not included in wage schedules and hence have no notified minimum wage. This includes all honorary work, domestic work, care-provision, and all forms of home-based work. For industries with minimum wage notification or some form of agreed wage, women workers are paid far below the legal wage, especially in the construction and garment industries and in all forms of rural employments. Even in sectors employing women workers where wages are notified, the wages are much lower than for work in sectors that are perceived to be male jobs. There is a gendered differentiation of work and ‘female work’ is seen as less hard and skilled often leading to discriminatory wages within the same industry or sector. Wage discrimination along with lack of access to social security is also widespread in the case of migrant workers.
Discrimination in Social Security Benefits
Even with the passing of the Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act, most women workers do not have access to social security. Except a minuscule section in formal employment, access to health care including statutory benefits such as maternity benefits with maternity leave, pension at retirement and other benefits are not implemented. In both the construction industry and in plantations, women workers are assumed to be supplementary workers and hence their access to social security is subject to access of the same by their spouses, if engaged in the same industry, even though this is taken to be a part of the social wage paid to all workers.
Discrimination in skill development
Access to training for skill development is limited for women workers in most employments, from construction, to garments, to all forms of rural work. Women are hence employed mostly in what is perceived as ‘low-skill’ jobs leading to low incomes.
Work Conditions
The present global economic crisis has also affected women disproportionately. This is also due to the fact that gendered labour relationships lead to unsecure employment, as a form of gender discrimination. With food prices surging and real wages falling, the pressure on women for providing for the family has increased forcing women to enter unsecure, non-standard, and hazardous employments in order to supplement the household income.
High work intensity and Piece work
The intensity of work is higher in sectors employing women as these are either sectors that are unregulated and hence with no limit on hours of , or in new industrial sectors such as garments which is a low-value added sector that extracts absolute surplus to increase its profit margins. The proposed amendment to the Factories Act is also proposing to re-introduce night work for women which will further increase the intensity of work and vulnerability of women, more so in SEZs where non-implementation of laws is becoming a norm.
Further, with increasing work being outsourced to home-based production at piece rates, the work intensity has magnified manifold as there is no mechanism for monitoring working hours. This has also reordered the paradigm of employment by introducing family labour for industrial production to meet production targets. The piece rates adopted in tea plantations have re-introduced child labour in order to meet targets.
Hazardous Work
Today there are more women than men employed in low end hazardous employments such as garbage collection, hospital waste disposal, in mines, carrying heavy construction materials at worksites with no safety regulations or social protection for occupational diseases as these employments are either beyond the ambit of the legislation or there is no political will to implement the laws.
Harassment
Harassment at the workplace
Harassment ranging from increased work pressure to verbal, written or physical abuse at workplace is common. Harassment becomes an important tool to discourage organising. Women also face harassment from communities, family members and sometimes male fellow workers when they try to take on leadership roles and try to organise.
Sexual Harassment at the workplace
This harassment often takes the form of verbal and even physical abuse, with sexual overtones and reinforces images of inferiority that women have been socialised into. From seeking sexual favours or advances in exchange for work benefits to creating “hostile working environment” for women to be in, sexual harassment at workplace as specified by the Vishakha guidelines is rampant in almost every workplace.
Restrictions in public life
Social practices and believes often restrict women’s social life, freedom of movement, access to education, and employment. A democratic public culture is essential to enable women to exercise their rights.
The NTUI believes that these issues have become obstacles in self-organising by women workers and unions have to make an effort to support these initiatives as well as enhance the participation of women in unions and its leadership.
In view of this NTUI resolves to:
• Build a national campaign in 2012 to address working women’s issues beginning with 8 March mobilisation on:
i. A Need-based Minimum Wage and Strict Enforcement of Minimum Wages;
ii. Equal Wage for Equal Work;
iii. Universal Social Security;
iv. Universal Food Security;
v. A Safe and Secure Workplace;
vi. Ratify ILO Conventions related to women workers.
• Build a process of learning across regions and sectors for expanding and sustaining women’s leadership within NTUI and its affiliates, and for this purpose hold training programs for women leaders for organising women workers and consolidating women’s base in the NTUI, and bring out educational material, pamphlets and posters on the specific issues relating to women workers.
• Promote a culture against gender prejudice, domestic violence and sexual harassment in public spaces and within families and communities where affiliate’s members live daily, which focuses on building positive images of working women, and campaign for her dignity, self-respect and right to equality in her home, work-place and society.
• Organise Regional and Sectoral Councils of NTUI affiliates having significant women workers.
Leading up to the formation of NTUI Women’s Forum by the 3rd General Assembly.
Proposer: Anuradha Talwar, Paschim Banga Khet Majoor Samity, West Bengal
Seconder: Milind Ranade, Sarva Shramik Sangh, Maharashtra
8 January 2012, Kolkata