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Issue No. 127 | 08 March 2002 |
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Power Plays
Interview: Still Flying Women: Suffrage or Suffering Industrial: No Coco Pops For Brenda Unions: Back to the Heartland Activists: Getting to the Point International: Push Polling Economics: Debt Defaulters Poetry: Those Were the Days Review: Black Hawk Dud Satire: Fox-Lew Launch Rescue Bid for Beta Video
The Soapbox The Locker Room Week in Review Tool Shed
 How to Beat the BanksCollins Goes Cahill
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News Go Forth and Multiply – Unions on Women
The International Womens Day campaign began with an ICFTU press conference in New York followed by a seminar on empowering women through organising. The events coincided with the 46th meeting of the UN Commission on the Status of Women.
The ICFTU and its Global Unions partners are calling on members, national trade unions, and trade union centres, to mobilise their respective movements around the issue of "women's right to decent work," the main theme of the campaign in 2002. The ICFTU represents 157 million workers in 148 countries and territories. Meanwhile, Sydney schoolgirl Jessica Harvie (15) of Monte Sant Angelo Mercy College, launched Oxfam's Community Aid Abroad report with the following statement.
"We are not machines. International Women's Day is a time for celebrating the achievements of women and for challenging those things that stop women from achieving their full potential. Today we want to challenge Nike and Adidas to stop profiting from the exploitation of women in Asia. We've learnt from this new report that 80% of Indonesian workers in factories producing for Nike and Adidas are young women aged 17 to 29. We've learnt that they work in dangerous conditions and are shouted at when they work too slowly. We've learnt that most are forced by their poverty to send their children to distant villages to be cared for by relatives and that they commonly only get to see their kids three or four times per year. I want to ask executives from Nike and Adidas, could you stand to be always separated from your children? Could you stand what it would do to your family? Could you deal with wondering whether your children will recognise you next time you get to see them? Asian women are not machines. They work hard to make a living and to provide for the needs of their families and they should be treated with respect - the respect that is their due. Your companies pay millions of dollars to sporting stars and make hundreds of millions of dollars in profit. How about making sure the women who make your shoes are paid enough to meet the basic needs of their children? How about making sure the factories are safe so that women don't get sick from breathing in dangerous chemicals and don't lose fingers in cutting machines? How about making sure they are free to join unions? How about making sure they are free to speak honestly about their factories without fear of losing their jobs? Young people in our generation are the ones who buy your products. We are the ones who make you successful. A lot of young people don't know anything about sweatshops, but as more and more of us find out you are going to have to change. You can't sell a cool image while so many of the women who make your shoes are being treated like dirt. We're not going to let you. We demand greater action on workers rights. Through the Fair School Wear campaign we've learnt how migrant women are exploited as home workers in Australia. We've taken steps to ensure that our school uniforms are made by companies which have signed the Homeworker Code of Practice, and we're helping to campaign to pressure other companies to become part of Fair Wear's No Sweatshop Label. We're going to support FairWear and Oxfam Community Aid Abroad's campaign to stand up for the rights of workers overseas producing for companies like Nike and Adidas. When women around the world work together for change, we know we can make a difference.
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