WFTU Declaration on the International Working Women’s Day 8 March 2019

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from the World Federation of Trade Unions.

The World Federation of Trade Unions honors the International Working Women’s Day on 8th March 2019, under the slogan:

“The WFTU against all forms of inequality, against all forms of exploitation”

162 years after the first uprising of women textile workers in 1857 in New York, claiming the increase of their miserable salaries, the reduction of working hours, equality in payment and social rights, the situation for the working, unemployed and young women, is extremely harsh: unemployment, flexible work, lack of free and high quality health services and healthcare for them and for their children, psychological pressure and violence mainly inside but also outside the workplaces.

Poverty, misery, the wars waged for the interests of the big monopolies, have created and continue to create millions of refugees, 50% of whom are women and girls who run the risk of violence, prostitution and abuse, during their travel and upon arrival at the destination countries.

The World Federation of Trade Unions, since its foundation, has been firmly struggling for working women’s equality and for the improvement of their position in all areas of their social life. For one more year, we join our voice with the working women and support their demands:

• Reclaim our rights! Hit back the capitalist onslaught! Defeat fascist forces!
• Decent work and dignity at work
• Equal pay for equal work
• Maternity benefit to all
• Social benefit to all
• Health and safety at the work places!

The struggle for the fulfillment of these demands, as well as for the protection against prostitution and human trafficking, are always at the center of the world class oriented trade union movement.

We always highlight the importance of organization of more and more working women to their trade unions, accordingly to the place and sector they work, the importance of their participation in militant initiatives with a substantial role, with their appointment to the Administrative Boards of their Organizations.

Aiming at a more active involvement of working women in the life and action of trade unions and at the strengthening of coordination and mobilization for the women’s issues, the WFTU organized last year, from 8 – 10 March 2018 in Panama, a World Working Women Congress, where the new WFTU Women’s Committee was elected. Such activities gave the opportunity to exchange experiences on the working and living conditions of women of the 5 continents, and decisions for coordination and militant initiatives were taken, such as the Conference organized last November in Bahrain for the working women of the Arab countries and such as the International Meeting of Working Women of Central America, that will take place in Mexico on 10-11 March 2019.

The WFTU expresses its solidarity to the working women and to the peoples of Venezuela, Palestine, Syria, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bangladesh, to all the peoples who are fighting against capitalist exploitation, against imperialism and foreign interventions. We greet the liberation of Ahed Tamimi, the girl who became a symbol of the Palestinian struggle, and also the liberation of Julia Amparo Lotan, member of the WFTU Presidential Council from Guatemala.

We greet all working women on the 5 continents, who struggle through their trade unions and within the ranks of WFTU, for stable work with rights, for a world without exploitation, imperialist wars and poverty.

We call upon all the WFTU affiliates and friends to honor the International Working Women’s Day, by organizing activities and events to stress the necessity to defend their rights, the necessity to protect their social role, the necessity to struggle for the end of exploitation and of capitalist barbarity.