Pakistan: Home-based women workers to launch union
Myra Imran
The International News: Pakistan
Aug 19, 2008
To claim and advocate for their rights more effectively, home-based women workers plan to launch a registered union at the national level on August 22.
Under the name of ‘Home-based Aurat Workers Union Pakistan (HBAWUP)’, the union will be the first of its kind in the country. The announcement in this regard was made at a press conference organised at the ActoinAid office here on Tuesday.
Highlighting the aim of this initiative, Manager Social and Women’s Rights for ActionAid, Aqsa Khan said that in addition to providing home-based women workers a platform for claiming their rights, the union would strengthen their ability for collective bargaining so as to strongly negotiate with middle agents and investors. She said that it would also enable them to advocate with the government for signing and ratifying United Nations ILO convention. “Representation from all four provinces in local, provincial and national structure would convert the union into a strong voice against unjust and exploitative market trends,” she added.
According to research conducted by World Bank, over 10 million women in Pakistan are engaged in home-based work in sectors like garments, bangle-making, shoe-stitching, embroidery, carpet-weaving and prawn shelling etc. “These women are the most unprivileged part of the society and have no social or legal recognition of their work,” Ms Khan pointed out.
She said that for last three years the Women Workers Helpline, Labour Education Foundation and ActionAid had been working for the rights of home-based women workers. “In this process, these organisations established 11 cooperatives in Sindh and Punjab to build their capacity and provided them with basic health facilities,” she said.
Through those cooperatives, she said, a large number of home-based workers got organised and felt the need for launching a national-level union to call for improvement in wages and social protection. “The union will be formally launched at a national congress in Lahore in which more than 500 home-based workers will participate and later in Islamabad in the first week of September,” Ms Khan said.
Explaining the membership criteria, she said that all home-based women workers could become the union members. “All cooperative members as well as other home-based workers from districts have already formed their 20-25 member primary associations,” she said adding that these associations would decide their constitution and logo on their own.
The union will have a 25-member National Executive Committee comprising a chairperson, general secretary, president, vice presidents and information secretary.
Capacity-building initiatives and trainings would be arranged for home-based workers’ union leadership and members.
