Outcome of the Knowledge-sharing Forum on Women, Work and Migration, Colombo, Sri Lanka, April 2018

1 May 2018

If current trends continue, by the year 2030, two-thirds of all global wealth will be owned by the richest one percent of people.[1] This statistic is no accident. It is the outcome of economic and social systems that engage in structural violence to reproduce massive inequality.

As workers, worker organisations, feminist, women’s and migrant rights organisations,  academics and journalists, from South, Southeast and West Asia, who met in Colombo in April 2018, we welcome the current initiative to address the root causes and consequences of violence and harassment in the world of work through a binding ILO Convention and Recommendation.

While acknowledging the disproportionate impact of physical violence in the world of work on women, and the urgent need to address it, a Convention that limits its scope to physical violence and harassment will undermine our collective goal of advancing women’s human rights, achieving gender equality and a world of work with justice between humans and nature.

Physical violence and harassment is not separate from structural violence. Structural violence in the world of work is the systemic production of inequalities and violence through coercive work environments that lead to the denial of decent work, including for self-employed people, living wages and equal pay for work of equal value, freedom of association and collective bargaining, access to public and essential services including justice and remedies, lack of access to benefits and natural resources, distress and forced migration. Systemic violence creates risks for workers at the margins, including migrant workers, who need to be better supported through the governments of countries of origin when in destination countries. Systemic violence invisibilises the causes and triggers of violence against women, and foments inequalities on the basis of sex, age, race, class, caste, tribe, ability, sexuality, sexual orientation and gender identity and expression and sex characteristics, religion and belief, language, migration, citizenship, employment, maternity and marital status, political affiliation, among others, and exacerbates the effects of climate change and wars, among others. Unless systemic, structural power inequalities are rectified, gender based violence, in and outside of the world of work, cannot be meaningfully addressed.

If this instrument is to be effective, it must address the structural roots of violence comprehensively and expose its embeddedness in neoliberal globalisation. It must address the forces that ignore, undervalue and criminalise work and livelihoods. It must ensure the livelihoods of workers forced off lands, displaced by development, technological change, environmental and climate change. It must discourage loss of work and employment as a result of war. Work includes unpaid workers and work in and outside the home, such as provisioning labour of which, globally, women perform the disproportionate share. It includes the informal economy, self-employed and own account workers. It includes all work that people do to sustain their livelihood needs. It must include sex workers who are routinely subject to stigma, and undocumented workers and migrants regardless of their immigration status. Given their key role in ensuring rights in the world of work, ending violence against women trade unionists and all labour rights organisers in the formal and informal economies must be included and prioritised. The instrument must address state violence, poverty wages as a form of violence, and structural workplace inequalities, such as the push towards precarious and isolated work. It must address violence in global supply chains. The term ‘workplace’ must proactively recognise currently unrecognised workspaces, including all work and livelihood activities that take place in the public and the commons and recognise violence perpetrated anywhere on account of conflict arising from work relations.

‘Economic harm’ must be recognised not only in terms of the individual but also to our communities and natural environment. While it should include activities that cause economic harm to workers through wage theft, exploitative wages, and lack of financial compensation due to the loss of jobs, it must also be understood in terms of the devastating effects of corporate control over our political, economic, legal and social systems and planet, including through privatisation, tax evasion, free trade policies and the undermining of policies and laws for social good and the protection of human rights.  Irreparable harm to the environment and damage to the material base that sustains life and livelihood should also be included and recognised, as well as the violence endured by people displaced and dispossessed by climate change.

We are concerned about the lack of support from many employers and some states for a Convention and Recommendation and we urge all stakeholders to ensure that the issue of violence in the world of work receives the attention it demands. This structural dimension of work should be explained in the text of the Convention so that the instrument is read in this light. The meaningful participation and voice of women, workers, migrants and refugees at all steps in the work towards a new international instrument is critical. We urge that every effort is made to ensure that women are meaningfully consulted, included and valued throughout this process, through the continuation of consultative workshops on these issues, and by being represented in the tripartite negotiations of the ILC.

[1] M Savage, ‘Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030’, The Guardian, 7 April 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/apr/07/global-inequality-tipping-point-2030.