Harrasment and violence

Thursday, 01 November 2007 16:25

Attention: open in a new window. PDFPrintE-mail

Violence is frequently threatened or used against workers, by supervisors, employers, the police, state security forces, strike breakers and others. Workers are often harassed, beaten, and sometimes killed for organising into unions and demanding better working conditions. Women workers are frequently subjected to humiliating searches, verbal and physical abuse, and sexual harassment in the workplace, as well as fearing assault and rape on the way home from the factory late at night.

Factory managers and supervisors often harass, humiliate and abuse workers. Elina, a garment worker in an Indonesian factory PT Busana Prima Global, reports: "There is a lot of verbal abuse.Management calls us names throughout the time we are working. They call us 'stupid', 'lazy', 'useless', 'bastard’s child'.  They say, 'you don’t deserve any better'. There is physical abuse as well. Our ears are often pulled, and managers yell directly into our ears.’1

At a factory visited by the CCC in Lesotho, women workers reported being searched (by women supervisors) every day when leaving the factory. Some women were forced to take off their clothes to show that they were not stealing anything. Workers from this factory were raped walking home from late overtime work but management still refused to provide late night transport 2.Indonesian women workers report that “pretty girls in the factory are harassed by male managers. They come on to the girls, call them into their offices, whisper into their ears,touch them (…),bribe them with money and threaten them with losing their jobs if they don’ have sex with them”.3
 
Yet women workers are continuously challenging attitudes and stereotypes and are organising in various ways to defend their rights and demand safer working conditions and an end to harassment and violence.

Union organising workers in the Katunayake export processing zone of Sri Lanka, for instance, surveyed women workers in the boarding-house community next to the zone. A common worry of the women was their safety going home late at night as rape was not uncommon in the community. Together, union and workers decided that one solution was to get a bus to take them back and forth between the factories and the boarding houses. The workers and the union got the local authorities to buy a bus to start this service. This worked very well so the union asked the factory owners to buy two more buses. The women still worked long hours, but they were at least safer than when walking up to three kilometres (one and a half miles) between home and factories.

Notes

1 Play Fair at the Olympics – respect workers’rights i the sportswear industry,2004,page 24.

2. Made in Southern Africa, Clean Clothes Campaign, 2002, page 88. Also page 92.

3. Play Fair at the Olympics – respect workers’rights in the sportswear industry,2004,page 24