Occupational Health and Safety training trickling down in Bangladesh

Another aspect of Bangladesh to highlight is the national networking or synergy.  As in other countries, WSM partners are offered the possibility to jointly develop services or lobby. From 2016 till 2018 part of the resources were invested in the Occupation Health and Safety Initiative, a “train-the-trainer” course which equips participants with the information and materials to put on their own training at the grassroots level with workers, community members, and members of their organizations.

A 2017 training participant from the public health organization Gonoshasthaya Kendra (GK) has conducted many grassroots workshops in the past on personal hygiene and first aid.  Based on last year’s 20-day ToT series, he has added occupational health and safety issues to his presentations so they now better address the reality of the people GK serves. Since last November, he has reached 800 people through his base-level public health and occupational health workshops. 

From 2019 onward, they will invest in the Bangladesh Social Protection Advocacy Network (BSPAN), a newly created multi-actor platform which gathers also the Bangladeshi AMRC partners.

What has the most significant change for young leaders in trade unions?

15 young leaders of GEFONT discussed this today in Kathmandu, with the help of Gopal. Based on examples from brick factories in Bhaktapur and for transport sector, it seems Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBA) are what they feel has the most important impact, as it improves the lives of not only their members, but of all workers.

One of the important messages was that young leaders aren’t the leaders of tomorrow, they should be leaders today! It meant for participants they don’t have to wait for positions to be given by the current leadership, but to demand and take up leadership positions, as young workers have specific issues and face particular challenges (internships, lack of permanent contracts, more at risk for sexual harassment etc.) that need to be represented already now at leadership level of trade unions or during CBA negotiations.

Trade unions as actors for development

Over 15 representatives of Asian trade unions (of which GEFONT, NTUC, CLC and KSBSI) as well as solidarity support organisations (SSOs), of which WSM and IIWE, met in Bangkok, Thailand on 19-20 June 2018 to review, strengthen and coordinate international cooperation initiatives.

Trade unions across the world are involved in international cooperation initiatives. The TUDCN Partnerships work provides a platform for them to share best practice, coordinate their work and construct common tools to strengthen the effectiveness of this work. The TUDCN is undertaking a series of regional meetings to increase the inter-regional coordination of this work.

Webinar Women, SSE and Social Protection from RIPESS

RIPESS, a member of the Latin American network on the right to social protection invites the Asian partners to their fifth webinar, focusing on Women & SSE on Tuesday June 12th at 13h UTC/GMT (15h Europe/18h30 Delhi/20h Bangkok).

This panel of experiences will explore to which extent SSE represents a means to provide social protection for women? We will explore the subject, identify successful practices, confirm structuring strategies that can  engage the movement, networks and SSE organizations, working together to improve the women’s lives. With activists and experts in the field, we'll lift the veil on this current reflection to move forward together: a guest from the Women Promotion Centre Gregoria Apaza from the network from Bolivia, Elise Pierrette Memong Meno from the network from Cameroun (RESCAM), and Santiago Fisher from World Solidarity from Belgium. The session will be animated by Ethel Coté (Women entrepreneurs network - Women of the world, Canada).

As a reminder, with these webinars, RIPESS is inviting participants to an annual virtual meeting cycle (2017/2018), in which we want to leave enough time to listen to experts' testimonials on different topics of interest identified by our group, and create an international space for exchanges. Please note that our meetings take place in the three RIPESS' languages (French, English, Spanish). See the summary of the last Webinar#4 (Governance&SSE).

Please subscribe at info@ripess.org or the Facebook page, and we will explain you how to join the webinar.

Manila exchange GK-OKRA on elderly revisited

From 7 to 14 February 2018, GK and OKRA organized an exchange in Manila on the challenges of the elderly in Bangladesh and Belgium, which was facilitated by WSM. During this visit, through the assistance of COSE, both groups were also able to visit and exchange with elderly Philippinos, a very rewarding experience.

On the 11th of February, both organisations organized a successful mainstreaming workshop where GK and OKRA presented challenges of the elderly in Asia, Europe and the world, and where testimonies from elderly gathered by partners in different countries were read out. In a final panel discussion, the delegates of GK and OKRA not only presented their experiences in being a movement for, by and with the elderly but also the value added and the perspectives of their mutual partnership.

Yesterday, on 17th April, the results and conclusions of this exchange were presented to the daily board of OKRA in Brussels, who welcomed the outcome of the visit and confirmed their commitment to continue the partnership on the basis of the action plan that was drafted in Manila. A similar meeting will take place in the coming days in GK in Bangladesh. A video was also made of this visit which you can view here.

WSM would like to thank all those involved in making this exchange and partnership a success, in particular Dr. Kadir, coordinator of GK; Mieke Peeters, president of OKRA; Mark De Soete, General Director of OKRA; the daily boards of OKRA and GK, as well as the delegates of both organizations who were with us in Manila: Kamrun (Onu), Isahaque, Dulal, Maddie,  Bart, Ingrid, Niek, Jo. And with a special thanks to Jef Van Hecken for facilitating the preparations of the visit!

Launched today: Social protection Toolbox

The social protection team at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) has launched the new Social Protection Toolbox @ www.socialprotection-toolbox.org It is packed full of content to support policy makers and other stakeholders in Asia and the Pacific to build inclusive social protection schemes, with:

• More than 100 good practices from around the world that show what others are doing to build inclusive legal frameworks, schemes for those in poverty, for persons with disabilities and universal schemes for all.
• E-learning guides that have been developed together with Development Pathways and show how investing in inclusive social protection can accelerate progress towards the SDGs, why universal schemes are better at reaching the poor than targeted schemes, and what policy options to consider when designing inclusive schemes. 
• An interactive assessment tool that will help you identify coverage gaps in your country and find out how to close them based on the steps other countries are taking to fill similar gaps.
• An animation that illustrates what social protection is and why it is important for Asia and the Pacific in about 2 minutes.
• A quiz that tests your knowledge and reveals thought-provoking facts about social protection in Asia and the Pacific.
• Our latest publications, covering a variety of topics related to social protection, poverty and inequality.

And there’s more to come! Over the coming months, the social protection team at ESCAP will be adding new e-learning guides on how to administrate and finance social protection, how to advance social protection for persons with disabilities and a series of new publications that will explore inequality through a multidimensional lens. Hopefully this will help to move toward universal social protection that leaves no one behind in Asia and the Pacific.

Indonesia synergy focuses on young workers and political action

The WSM partners in Indonesia KSBSI and SBMI working on labour migration choose young workers and political action as the areas they wanted to improve in.

For political action, they dream their synergy is able to influence the government in making labour migration policy and socialize it towards members and officials, especially at local level. In short term, they expect to see:

• Socialisation in four regions for 100 members of KSBSI and SBMI
• In three regions, meeting with local level authorities to explain legislation and adapt similar regulation at local level.
• Synergy drafts a proposal of local level regulations and ministerial decree at national level

On mid-term, they would like to see:

• Local level regulations are adopted and implemented in four provinces.
• Ministerial decree is adopted with operational details about recruitment agencies (criteria, responsibilities, fees)
• Synergy to influence the government during MoU for bilateral agreements regarding protection of migrant labourers

And in long term, the participants would love to see:

• Bilateral agreements between Indonesia and receiving countries hold provisions for migrant labourers passport held by labourers, legal assistance from embassies, freedom of association is respected, one day holiday/week, able to communicate with family.
• Government regulates and manages the placing of migrant labourers

Regarding the young workers, they hope the synergy contributes to young workers to be professional, responsible and independent. They expect to see in the short term:

• 100 young workers members are made aware of labour migration regulation
• Maintain or increase the involvement of young workers in synergy through leadership training, targetting them specifically in invitations for meetings or training, use of social media.
• Targetting students at universities and colleges before departure or employment to join trade union.

They would like to see the SBMI-KSBSI membership of young workers increases by 300 through the synergy activities. On long term, participants would love to see that through the synergy, 80% of these new members are aware of their rights and able to defend themselves.

As this was their first time using the WSM approach to capacity strengthening, participants greatly appreciated the session and the way it helped them evaluate their work and plan for the future.

Can Cambodian partners file complaints at the ILO?

Life and work has been complicated in Cambodia in the past years, both for workers and for trade unions (see post here and here on Cambodia minimum wage struggle). ACV-CSC, ACV-CSC METEA and WSM have been supporting since many years the Cambodian Labour Federation (CLC) and the Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers Democratic Union (C.CAWDU), the largest independent federation in the textile sector in Cambodia affiliated to CLC. In the last years, CLC and C.CAWDU have demonstrated their strength and capacity to organise and mobilise workers, to negotiate agreements with individual companies and to launch (inter)national campaigns when needed. They are strongly valued by all key international stakeholders (ITUC, IndustriAll, UNI, CCC and several other labour rights organisations) for their independence.



However, many challenges remain for CLC-C.CAWDU. They requested from ACV-CSC and WSM to complement their (reactive) urgent appeal work with a more proactive strategy. Understanding the ILO’s work with regards to developing and supervising the effective implementation of international labour standards (ILS), is one of the key areas in which CLC-C.CAWDU wanted capacity strengthening.

Thirty five members of CLC, C.CAWDU and other affiliates delegated their leadership and the staff of the legal department took part in this training and looked at the ILO supervisory system, gathered data by interviews of garment workers and field visits and practiced by drafting complaints and campaigns for the Clean Clothes Campaign. It met with a 84% satisfaction rate and participants felt their expectations were largely met, promising to apply this knowledge and to share it with other members.

Solidarity across borders: trade unions from Nepal to Belgium

To look into adapting trade unions to a federal state, social elections and social security, the leadership of the three main Nepali trade unions came to Belgium end of October 2016 with the support of World Solidarity (WSM) and the largest Belgian trade union, ACV-CSC. 

WSM partners attend AMRC training on social protection and occupational health and safety in Laos

The Asia Monitor Resource Center (AMRC), a strategic partner of WSM, is organizing a training on the link between social protection and occupational health and safety (OHS). This training  is organized July 19-20, 2016, in Vientiane, Laos (programme).

Two participants, Dr. Mohammad Hayatun Nabi from NGWF in Bangladesh and Mr. Shiva Prasad Devkota from ITUC-NAC in Nepal are attending on behalf of the WSM supported Asia Network on the Right to Social Protection.

To get an idea of the content of the training, check out the training manual called ''Defining social protection by the grassroots workers".

Photo competition regarding decent work

Sotermun, an NGO based in Spain is launching this year again a photo competition around the theme of "decent work for decent life" and of course WSM again urges its partners to submit pictures highlighting their work. 

The deadline is 15th of September 2016. Here are the detailed guidelines, specifying each competitor can send in max. 3 pictures to sotermun@sotermun.es. Photos should be in jpg and high quality (min. 300dpi and 30cm large). A price of 500€ can be won, as well as certificates for appreciated entries. 

WSM's approach to capacity building

Let me briefly explain something about the way WSM does capacity strengthening with our partners. As you may know, WSM offers support to our partners on three levels:
1. Offering or improving services: WSM supports the partners in initiatives for groups of vulnerable workers, who are the beneficiaries of this program.  Activities: education and training, legal advice, training and skills, awareness and campaigning, study and research, policy research with legislative proposals.
2. Joint Political action: WSM supports the partner organisation to develop joint political actions to improve access to social protection and decent work.
3. Capacity strengthening: A steering committee, composed out of one representative per country, guides the WSM program. Sharing of good practices and internationalisation is stimulated through south-south and north-south exchanges. But next to that, WSM also uses an innovative voluntary tool, developed with HIVA, a multidisciplinary Research Institute for Work and Society which is associated with the University from Leuven, the KUL. During a pilot project in 2011, it was tried out in India and Cambodia and strongly appreciated by the partners. It starts with a workshop in which some concepts and levels of capacity strengthening are shared and discussed with the partner. Then, participants self-evaluate their organisation on five standard areas (and we added external communication):