Index

NEWSLETTER 14, JULY 2001 Making invisible work visible

Several times during the CCC's Barcelona meeting the need to focus attention on the informal sector was highlighted. The Austrian campaign immediately took up the challenge and organized a public forum -- "Der Multis neue Kleider" or "Making invisible work visible" -- in Vienna on this under-researched and rapidly growing segment of the garment industry.

Namrata Bali from the Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA) in India, the world's first union of women workers in the informal sector, shared her views on the numerous problems of homeworkers. As did Rosie Makosa from the Self Employed Women's Union (SEWU) in South Africa, Maria Emilia Tijoux from AnaClara in Chile, and Anneke von Luijken from the International Restructuring Education Network Europe (IRENE) in the Netherlands. Bettina Musiolek, of the German CCC discussed the situation in Eastern Europe.

Makosa painted a clear picture of what self-employment means in South Africa (for example, endless working hours, very bad sewing machines, no social security). Tijoux stressed the importance of doing research work on production structures, to determine responsibility for working conditions. Women who formerly worked in garment factories, consider their situation to have improved because now they are proudly working in microenterprises (microempresarios). Tijoux said it is a challenge to raise awareness that the supplier who closed down the factory, sold the machines to the women, and buys the same garments from them now, is still exploiting these women, who now have lost all their social security and have to work under great pressure. Bali also identified this as a problem in India. She also raised the issue of age. Working in a factory, badly paid and in bad circumstances is still seen as better than working at home, she said. This seems to be due to the flair of modernity and progress connected to industry. For this reason young women prefer to work in factories, instead of working as homeworkers as older women do.

The problem of the "invisibility" of homework and the working conditions one repeatedly cited by the participants. Tijoux, a sociologist at the University ARCIS in Chile, emphasized the need for research on this, and noted that as a counterstrategy to globalized production, investigations, by NGOs and academics, should also be globalized. Bali suggested that one idea for concrete support for those organizing in the informal sector could be a training program for the South African SEWU workers at the SEWA training center in India. Makosa told the group that after talking to people in Austria for three weeks about the drug problems, AIDS problem, social problems children face and their limited prospects for the future, someone asked her what SEWA members expected in the way of support. "Don't forget us people down there," she said. She stressed the value of inviting people from South Africa, giving them the opportunity to talk about their situation, and develop themselves by taking part in meetings and conferences.

For several days the CCC Austria was mentioned on TV, the radio, and in newspapers. This forum was one of the first times Austrian television took notice of the Clean Clothes Campaign. This notice included interviews with the guests and a representative of the campaign. The coverage included an industry response (Nike and H&M) promising to do everything to guarantee good working conditions. The CCC will have to hold them to that promise!

In addition to the public forum, the CCC guests were invited to speak at several schools and with union groups. There was also a very lively meeting with women from the Green party, which ended with Rosie Makosa singing a South African song, nearly moving the thirty-member audience to tears. It was an extraordinary meeting of a wide variety of Austrian women -- including trade unionists, students, mountain farmers, and housewives.