A Call to All WOMEN JOIN THE 5th GLOBAL WOMEN

Trinidad & Tobago, Strike, 2004

The Wages for Housework Campaign and National Union of Domestic Employees held a women's event in Arima.
Below are their Call, petition and demands.

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A Call to All WOMEN
JOIN THE 5th GLOBAL WOMEN'S STRIKE
WOMEN SAY NO WAR - INVEST IN CARING NOT KILLING

8 March International Women's Day

We invite all Women and men to join this year's Global Women's Strike on 8 March 2004, with women all over the Globe in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, India, Indigenous lands, South and North America, Australia and Europe. Together we voice our total opposition to war and the trade in arms that destroy our people and our planet. This year's Strike call, echoed by millions of women, and increasingly men, is INVEST IN CARING NOT KILLING - money for promoting life, not for death and destruction.

Even before bombs drop, the military soaks up our resources, leaving us to work endlessly to make up for what we and our loved ones are denied by the priorities of war. We grow most of the world's food - yet we and our children are the first to die of starvation, including on US `reservations' for Native Americans. We work the hardest for the least pay. The military props up corrupt governments so multinationals can exploit us, killing us with overwork, starvation and pollution. Women and children are 80% of the casualties of war. And we have suffered endless wars, from Angola to Congo, from Palestine to Korea, fomented and directed from the US and Europe. A million and a half of our children die every year from attacks on breastfeeding by the global market, particularly the milk formula and AIDS industries. Cuts in welfare and other social programmes North and South make us the invisible adjusters in "economic restructuring" and privatisation.

In Trinidad and Tobago workers face low wages and long working hours, with little time for family responsibilities, in most cases working for less than the wage stipulated by law, because there is insufficient monitoring and enforcement of the Minimum Wages Law. In the case of Domestics, although CEDAW has recommended that Trinidad and Tobago government recognize Domestics as workers, they continue to be unrecognized as workers in law and practice. They are deprived of severance benefits, health and safety, the right to bring claims before the Court in cases of wrongful dismissal, it is also not mandatory for employers to register them so they are unable to enjoy their right to social security benefits such as sickness, pensions, maternity, and injury benefits that are provided by the NIS Board and are enjoyed by other workers. The exclusion of Domestics as workers in law and practice fosters poverty and is a form of violence against women. We would be using the Global Strike to make women workers' demands to the Minister of Labour on International Day.

Our sisters from the villages of Uganda, where 75% of the annual budget goes to the military, have to dig for water that is unfit to drink. Like women everywhere, they struggle daily to survive and to change the world. They tell us: "We have suffered all types of Wars. Innocent hungry women and children killed... We do work endlessly caring for families, bearing children yet on empty stomachs.

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A PETITION TO GOVERNMENT FOR ALL DOMESTICS
RECOGNITION FOR DOMESTICS AS WORKERS

Whereas The Unremunerated Work Act 1995 acknowledges the work performed by women in the home is work, still domestics who perform this same work for wages is still not considered workers.

Whereas The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) commits States Parties to Condemn discrimination against women in form, and agree to pursue by all appropriate means and without delay a policy of eliminating discrimination against women.

Whereas Article 2 (c) of CEDAW commits States Parties to undertake:
To establish legal protection of the rights of women on an equal basis with men and to ensure through competent National Tribunals and other Public Institutions the effective protection of women against any act of discrimination.

Whereas Article 2 (f) of CEDAW further states that States Parties should take all appropriate measures, including legislation, to modify or abolish existing laws, regulations, customs and practices which constitute discrimination against women.

Whereas despite our enormous contribution and despite lip service to women's equality, domestics are denied the right to recognition as workers in law and in practice.

Whereas the Beijing Platform for Action states that government must take action by reforming laws and enacting National Policies that support the establishment of labour laws to ensure the protection of women workers including safe work practices, the right to organise and access to justice.

Whereas The Beijing Platform For Action further states that government must Enact and Enforce laws and introduce implementing measures, Including means of redress and access to justice in cases of non-Compliance to prohibit direct and indirect discrimination in relation to conditions of employment, including health and safety, as well as termination of employment and social security of workers.

Whereas Government has ratified CEDAW and agreed to honour The Beijing Platform For Action.

THEREFORE we petition government to implement CEDAW and The Beijing Platform for Action and recognise domestic as workers, to enable them to enjoy the right to protect equality under labour legislation as all other workers.

Issued by the National Union of Domestic Employees (NUDE)
Address: Mt. Pleasant Road, Arima. Tel. 667 5247

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Flyer with details of Strike event:

5th GLOBAL WOMEN'S STRIKE
8th March 2004

NUDE's Headquarters
Wattley Circular
Mt. Pleasant Road, Arima
From 3:30 P.M.

Women Say No War
INVEST IN CARING - NOT KILLING

Trinidad and Tobago, Wages For Housework Campaign
And
National Union of Domestic Employees (NUDE)

8^th March 2004
Calling all women to join the 5th GLOBAL WOMEN'S STRIKE. Calling all men to join with women to STOP THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT. INVEST IN CARING, NOT KILLING.

The Global Women Strike, a grassroots movement against the globalization of mass exploitation, is an extension of the caring we do and the violence perpetrated against women and children. Poverty is violence and lies at the root of all other violence against women. This is why the central demand of the Global Women Strike is payment for all caring work - in wages, pensions, land and other resources. The other demands are about specific needs, showing the way that this first basic demand could change the world.

Quantifying this work, we are asking how much of our lives are we giving? And as a result of giving so much for so little, we are weak in all kinds of ways that do not seem to connect with work. When we set out to count women's work, we set out to make the basic case for every ‘right' of which we are deprived. We show how the whole society rest on us, on our work, our wealth in the form of our many services, information technology, etc, which all of our work has helped produce.

STOP THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT
The Global Women's Strike was born in 1999, when women in Ireland decided to welcome the new millennium with a national general strike. They asked the International Wages for Housework Campaign to support their call, and we called on women all over the world to make the strike Global on the 8^th March 2000.

Working with the women in Ireland the International Wages for Housework Campaign with groups in over seventy (70) countries, including Trinidad and Guyana, agreed to make the strike global and have come together to work form the strike and to put forward our National Global demands.

This strike came out of along grassroots history, starting in 1952 with a little pamphlet called ‘A Women's Place' and continuing with women in over sixty (60) countries, including grassroots organizations with impressive track records who also demand a world that values all women's work and every life and who have achieved much. They are now part of an international network of strike co-ordinators.

Around the World Strike supporters are demanding

Abolition of "Third World Debt" Women in the South are owed billions for centuries of work.
Accessible clean drinking water and ecologically sound technology for every household.
Affordable, and accessible, housing and transportation
Protection against violence - at home, in factory or office, on the farm, on the street.
Pay equity for all - equal pay for work of Equal Value -Internationally
Decent wages for caring work, whether in the family or outside.
Paid Maternity leave and paid breast feeding breaks in waged work
No welfare reform that denies that "every mother is a working mother"
Implementation of the UN decision (Beijing) to measure and value the unwaged work done by women and men in National economic statistics.

THE NATIONAL STRIKE DEMANDS ARE
Cailing on Government to implement the ‘Unremunerated Work Act', to make visible the essential role of women, in both formal and informal sector. We also want to to highlight the fact that women's work, especially that of mothers and housewives, is still not recognized in our society.

We take this opportunity therefore to call on Government to implement the Domestic Workers Demand with our main priority being to recognize domestics as workers acknowledging the government's commitment with respect to the Unremunerated Work Act, the Equal Opportunity Act and the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women.

We also demand recognition for the contribution of men who actively support our struggle because, they agree that INVESTING IN CARING NOT KILLING is the priority of all workers and all humanity. Not only do men owe women their daily survival, from breastfeeding to cooked meals, clean clothes and emotional support, but they also depend on women prioritizing the FAMILY VALUES within the ‘Market Value' which now threatens the survival of the world

WHY ARE WOMEN STRIKING
To demand a total change of priorities $700 billion a year is spent on Military budgets worldwide, less than $20 billion is spent on all the essentials of life -accessible clean water, health, sanitation, basic education.

Women make the world go round, and raise and look after its entire population, but most of the work we do is unwaged and unvalued. This lack of economic and social recognition is the most basic sexist injustice, which devalues women and everything women do. It keeps our wages 25% - 50% below men's world wide. In fact, though a few women are now highly paid the gap between women's and men's wages is growing.

National Union of Domestic Employees (NUDE)
Wattley Circular Mt. Pleasant Road
Arima Trinidad W.I.
Tel: 868 667 5247 Fax: 868 664 0546

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