Coming up this month – Sharan Burrow, ITUC General Secretary
On 8 March, we will celebrate the critical role that women and their unions have played over the years. This International Women’s Day marks 25 years since the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. Union women have driven real progress in that time. With women’s rights, equality and equity now at the core of union priorities in many nations we can celebrate progress on equal pay for work of equal value, parental leave and maternity protections, women’s participation and the fight against violence and harassment but the struggle is far from over. The rise of the extreme right not only poses a threat to democracy and global peace but is already eroding women’s rights in many places around the world.
This only strengthens our resolve. With the ILO Violence and Harassment ratification campaign already registering a #UnionWin, we will carry the defiant voice of working women to the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women and continue to demand action on equality in all areas of our lives.
This month we will also be at the 338th Session of the ILO’s Governing Body. We will be pushing for organisational health and safety to finally be recognised as a fundamental right and looking to the Committee on Freedom of Association to publish its decisions about a number of key trade union complaints.
Finally, we look forward to the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. No country is free of the scourge of prejudice that pushes millions of racialised people to the margins of societies. As trade unionists, we will continue to fight for merit and rights-based societies in which all people are given a fair chance.
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Call to Action - let’s deliver #GenerationEquality
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Ahead of International Women’s Day, let’s celebrate the critical role that women and their trade unions have played over the years and call on governments to realise the ambition of the Beijing Platform.
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Highlights from the past month
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The campaign for national governments to ratify the ILO’s Convention on Violence and Harassment was launched earlier this year. After last year’s adoption of the set of robust and forward-looking international labour standards, in the form of Convention 190 (C190) and Recommendation 206 (R206), it is time to make them a reality and write them into law. Uruguary was the first country to answer the call; now unions everywhere are stepping up the work to ensure that these key measures to prevent and address violence and harassment in the world of work, are implemented in their country.
More information here.
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