News and Events

Announcements

• Domestic Workers build an international network and campaign for an International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention on Domestic Work
  The International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers (IUF), a WIEGO member, is in the process of establishing a network to promote domestic workers’ rights. The network will consist of domestic workers’ trade unions and other member-based organizations, as well as organizations that support efforts to improve the situation of domestic workers.  A Committee with majority representation from member-based organizations will be in place before the end of 2008, and a special web site for domestic workers, linked to the IUF site, will soon be operational at www.domesticworkersrights.org.

  One major task of the IUF network is to mobilise support and campaign for an ILO Convention on Domestic Work. In March 2008 the Governing Body of the ILO agreed to put “Decent Work for Domestic Workers” on the agenda of the 2010 International Labour Conference (ILC). The IUF is working with the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), global union federations such as the Public Service International (PSI), national trade union centres such as the Federatie Nederlandse Vakbewegin (FNV, Federation of the Dutch Labour Movement), amongst others, on this campaign. An important first task is to make sure that national trade union centres in as many countries as possible support the idea of a domestic work convention and, in collaboration with domestic worker organizations and other allies, make their voices heard at the ILO. ITUC and the IUF have sent out circulars to their affiliates to prepare them for the work ahead.

• WIEGO Conference: "Waste Pickers without Frontiers"
  
  
• Routledge Publishes Membership Based Organizations of the Poor book
• Call for Papers: "Beyond the Tipping Point: Development in an Urban World," UNU-WIDER Project Workshop
  
• WIEGO Joins the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI)
  
  
• Call for Papers for an International Conference Organized by Cornell University and the International Policy Center called "Labor Markets in Developing and Transition Economies: Emerging Policy and Analytical Issues"
  
  
• Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton joins AFL-CIO President Sweeney, former President of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions Inez McCormack, and AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer Bill Lucy and the American Center for International Labor Solidarity in honoring the Self Employed Women's Association and Ela Bhatt with the George Meany - Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award
  
  
• WIEGO Social Protection Programme Director Francie Lund co-edits ELDIS Gender Issues Resource page highlighting Social Protection and Gender as a key issue in international development
  
  
• WIEGO authors contribute to special "Review of Labour" issue of Economic and Political Weekly
  
  
• Ela Bhatt named Graduation Speaker for the 2006 Commencement Exercises at Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
  
  
  
• AFL-CIO awards the George Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award to Ela Bhatt of SEWA
  
  
  
• StreetNet International Co-ordinator deported from Zimbabwe
  
  
  
• WIEGO writes UNIFEM's Progress of the World's Women 2005
  
• SEWA under Attack (español)