This week, on 8 March, we celebrated the achievements of women, the women’s movement and women in our trade unions, recalling trade union struggles for equal rights and treatment at the workplace, in our unions and in society. We can be proud of what has been achieved.
It is a day of resistance. We fight those who curtail women’s rights and those resisting equality. We oppose the governments and political parties that attack the right to abortion and other women’s rights.
It is a day to highlight our actions: for equal pay, for equal rights, for equality in our workplaces and in society. It is a day of solidarity with women across the globe that face male oppression violence and harassment for being women and for demanding equal rights and treatment. In countries, like Iran and Afghanistan this means facing up to punishment and the death penalty. We stand with these women.
It is a day to step up our calls on governments to ratify and implement ILO convention 190 and the Istanbul Convention. With the ETF transport workers’ federation and the ETUC we have joined campaigns to ensure women get home safely after work, in the evenings, nights and weekends through public transport. With PSI we are working to rebuild the social organisation of care. We reclaim public services as a means of transforming unequal gender relations, starting with the strengthening of care systems and the construction of a model for addressing the sexual and reproductive rights of women in public health.
As unions we demand that women can exercise trade union rights, the right to organise, to bargain, and to strike and to be able revalue work and eradicate violence. We are calling for a gender-transformative digital new deal and state actions against feminicide. EPSU joined the various actions organised by our Belgian affiliates on this day to strengthen the voice of women and stand up for women’s rights.
Anger builds
Unions across Europe continue their actions for more staff and pay increases and better-quality jobs for workers in public services. The German union ver.di is organised strikes on 6 and 7 March as part of its campaign for a decent pay increase for public service workers, many of whom are women working in childcare and health services. The union used the actions to highlight the gender pay gap and the need for action to close it.
On 7 March, our French affiliates joined the strikes and demos across France against the government’s unjust retirement proposals of the government and an EPSU delegation took part to show our solidarity. The French unions continued their protests on women’s day and with a national demo on 11 March. Belgian firefighters and ambulance workers walked the streets of Brussels on 7 March with key demands including higher pay, retirement at 60, more staff, and the need to address stress and third-party violence.
The action is part of an action week for public service workers organised by our affiliates in Belgium. It includes local actions and strikes especially on 10 March. The unions focus on quality of the service, stressing this needs public funding, appropriate staffing, higher pay and improved conditions especially regarding stress at work.
Following weeks of action and strikes, UK health and ambulance workers are in negotiations with the government while Dutch health workers have called a national strike for 16 March and Portuguese nurses and public services workers will do the same on the 17th. These are strong signals that public service workers want recognition of and respect for their work. And as discussions heat up about reducing public debts by targeting public expenditure, public service workers – and in many sectors these are predominantly women – should not pay the price, again.