By
Fibre2Fashion
Published
Feb 25, 2016
Reading time
2 minutes
Download
Download the article
Print
Text size

IndustriALL’s Indian affiliates review progress

By
Fibre2Fashion
Published
Feb 25, 2016


Indian affiliates of IndustriALL Global Union which represents 50 million workers in 140 countries, are committed to continue organizing precarious workers in the textile, garment, leather, steel, mining and energy sectors.




The annual project evaluation of the union building project in the textile, garment, shoe and leather (TGSL) sector took place earlier this month in New Delhi, IndustriALL said on its website. The project was launched in 2014 to build strong unions and is supported by Swedish union IF Metall and Union to Union.

IndustriALL affiliates shared their organizing experiences and agreed that the project helped them to organize workers and to conduct number of awareness camps and rallies in 2015 to raise awareness on workers’ rights, as well as to inform them of availability and process of accessing social security benefits for textile, garment and leather industry workers.

Christina Hajagos-Clausen, IndustriALL director of textile and garment sectors, presented IndustriALL’s strategic plan for building union power in TGSL Sector and discussed initiatives taken in key producing countries such as Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Kenya, Madagascar and countries in Middle East, Northern Africa and in Latin America.

IndustriALL has been supporting its affiliates to develop action plans and strategy to fight legislation that increases precarious work. It also helps its affiliates to use collective bargaining to address precarious work. IndustriALL also supports its affiliates to develop strategy to gain permanent status for precarious workers and improve their working conditions and recruit precarious workers in to unions

Progressive efforts in monitoring and implementation of global framework work agreement (GFA) with companies like Inditex, H&M and current discussions to sign new GFAs were also discussed at the annual project evaluation.

Affiliates also underlined various challenges in the process of organizing, including anti-labour attitude of government officials, proposed anti-workers changes in labour laws, presence of complex supply chain, prevalence of migrant workers and low union dues collection. But despite the challenges they expressed a determination to increase union membership and continue their support for workers to defend workers’ rights through organizing precarious workers.

Copyright © 2024 Fibre2Fashion. All rights reserved.