SPANISH STATE / WOMEN AND NIGHTWORK
Towards equal
March 30, 1992• # 225 International Viewpoint general strikes over the past six months. The first general strike began in the mining villages of Leon, followed in October 1991 by a general strike that brought Asturias to a halt. In December of that year, it was the turn of Cartagena; in January 1992 the mining basins of
THE 54 signatory countries to Convention 89 of the
Asturias saw two weeks of big mobilizations with clashes with the police as well
International Labor Organization (ILO), which forbids as in Cartagena where the demonstrators women from working at night in industry, had until set fire to the regional parliament. In
February 27, 1992 to terminate this agreement or to sign up
March a general strike is planned for for another ten years. France and Switzerland have just
Cantabria and in April for Galicia.
taken, almost simultaneously, the same decision: not to
Meanwhile, 20,000 delegates from the two largest union confederations, the renew Convention 89, which they claim is obsolete.
Workers Commissions (CCOO) and the
General Workers' Union (UGT) from the affected regions assembled in front of the industry ministry in Madrid to demand action.
Left perspectives
These conflicts have sparked off debates in the unions on the perspective of a general strike throughout the Spanish State.
This idea, which is supported by the left in the CCOO has also been taken up by some leaders such as Marcelino
Camacho, the CCOO president, but the majority of the CCOO and UGT leaderships have ruled it out.
However the question will not go away since the PSOE government is in the process of going on the offensive on all fronts: there is a proposal for an anti-strike law; reductions in social benefits for the unemployed at a time of high and rising unemployment (more than 17%);
and flexibility in layoffs to facilitate the reconversion of small and medium-sized
Despite the radicalism and size of the mobilizations, the main demands - no job losses and an industrial policy leading to new jobs — will not be easily won, without the imposition of a new economic policy on the government.
This is not feasible above all unless the spreading conflicts come together into a general strike.
This is why this issue is central and why its rejection by the trade union leaders is proof of their blindness.
The government is using the prospect of the European single market in the wake of the Maastricht agreement as the pretext to put pressure on the unions with the aim of bringing about a social pact.
This idea has not had a very favourable response but it may make headway.
Everything hangs on the outcome of the current battle over reconversion; the stronger the resistance and the mobilizations the more distant will be the prospect of a social pact. *
MARIANNE EBEL
B OTH governments waited until
the last minute to announce their decision, the French government using the pretext of a decision made on July 25, 1991 by the European Community's Court of Justice -following a submission by an Alsatian manufacturer - which ruled that French legislation was in contradiction with a European directive of 1976 on equality bet-
There was nothing, apart from the pressure of the employers and its willingness to submit to them, to stop France's Socialist government from resolving the contradiction by extending the ban on night work to men, thus permitting it to renew its signatu-
Switzerland, for its part, advanced a pseudo-argument about Euro-compatibility and bravely hid behind Germany, which has never adhered to Convention 89, but which has just declared unconstitutional a law banning night work for women.
These decisions will worsen the situation of women everywhere in the world without in any way improving that of men. Given that Europe has abandoned Convention 89, the industrialized countries of the Third World (which remain almost the sole signatories of this accord, already renounced by Ireland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg and never recognized by Britain and Germany will feel themselves no longer bound by an article which has been emptied of all content. This will leave the field free to the multinationals to increase the superexploitation of labour in these countries. In Europe trade union mobilizations might allow the introduction of protective legislation, but the women of the Third World can hope for no such alleviation.
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misery
International Viewpoint # 225 • March 30, 1992
WOMEN AND NIGHTWORK
Workers now have an equal right to destroy their health through night work. Rather than prohibiting night work for all unless it is not socially indispensable, it is now authorized in a general fashion, in the full knowledge that it does violence to our interior clock and that it leads to irreversible damage.
The health, the lives of those who produce the wealth, the equilibrium of families, the everyday life of children, none of this counts for anything. The governments have many other concerns... and in the first place that of pleasing the bosses by lifting the obstacles to international competition, as has been frankly admitted by the Swiss federal councillor Jean-Pascal Delamuraz, responsible for the public economy: "To renew our signature to the Convention would go against the efforts undertaken to improve the framing conditions of our economy and the attraction of the Swiss economic area... To maintain this old instrument was dangerous. It was to run the risk of being badly paced in the face of competition" (24 Heures, February 20, 1992). This is also an argument, of course, in favour of legalizing child labour.
In France the Minister of Labour, Mme. Martine Aubry, has preferred to emphasize professional equality, promising that a draft law will be introduced in the spring session envisaging compensation in the form of reduced hours or wage increases. In reality, far from guaranteeing equality, this step backwards will cement inequalities.
• What kind of night work will be offered to women?
The same repetitive, monotonous and unqualified work that women have to do during the day, with all the added inconvenience. Far from marking any real step towards equality, night work will mean growing social isolation with no chance of promotion.
• Night work will not be voluntary.
By suppressing the protection previously enjoyed by women, the state exposes everyone — and in particular those who are threatened with being marginalized - to the arbitrary whim of the logic of the profits of the employers.
That much is obvious if one looks at who works nights in those sectors which already today allow night work for all: it is overwhelmingly those who really have no other choice, refugees or immigrants, single mothers, those on low wages, those who can find no other work or those whose qualifications are judged insuffi8 cient.
• Women and men are not equal on the labour market.
More likely to be without qualifications and to be dependent on work which is not too far from their home, women are less mobile than men and have less alternatives than men to refuse whatever work is offered to them - such as night work. Sleep — a right or a privilege?
The suppression of Convention 89 of the ILO aggravates the situation of women without any compensation: they will continue in fact to do two days of consecutive work, one in the factory at night, the other in the house during the day, this time with the privilege of no longer sleeping at night.
Certainly, only motherhood in the biological sense of the term (pregnancy/childbirth) distinguishes a woman from a man. Outside of these exceptional periods, men and women should be treated the same.
There would be no problem with this conception of equality if health protection was guaranteed for all rather than being increasingly challenged and if one forgets that after childbirth there is the child, that after the office or the factory, there are the children, the shopping, the meals, the housework, another day of work. In short, for real equality of rights and opportunities, it is necessary to begin by recognizing the social dimension of maternity/paternity and remembering that there is inevitably a friction between waged work and educational/household work.
With a concern for equality that is absent when it comes to guaranteeing equal wages, the employers have been quick to denounce the ban on night work for women as discriminatory.
In France, moreover, they have not waited for the government to renounce Convention 89 before imposing enterprise agreements introducing night work for women in two sectors directly covered by Convention 89 - electronics and the metallurgical industry.
Between 1988 and 1989, 106 enterprise agreements have thus been concluded without the trade unions, apart from the CGT (France's biggest trade union confederation, aligned with the Communist Party), protesting against such abuses. In Switzerland trade union resistance has been more firm: basing themselves on Convention 89, the unions have succeeded in imposing respect for this agreement, in particular preventing the micro-electronics sector from introducing night work for women.
The fact that in Switzerland (a country not renowned for its workers mobilizations!) the bosses must wait until 1993 before exploiting women workers at night demonstrates that a more determined struggle on the political and trade union fronts would have allowed a more favourable balance of forces to be built in Europe.
The EC Court of Justice and the Karlsruhe Tribunal would not have been able to conclude so easily that the ban on night work for women was discriminatory if women, aided by the workers organizations, had been able to defend a fundamental idea: in the context of the social inequalities which they suffer from, the suppression of a specific protection for women discriminates against them.
A genuine commitment to sexual equality would mean examining how to extend the ban on unnatural working hours to men, how to limit the inevitable health risks linked to night work and how to advance concretely towards a more equitable sharing of educational and domestic tasks. But this would imply priorities other than those followed today in the countries of the European Community, which essentially involve satisfying the demands of the employers for increased flexibility.
Slaves of the machine
At the end of a 20th century which has seen astounding technical and scientific progress, we are becoming more than ever the slaves of the machine. What future do we want for ourselves and our children? A society which works 24 hours a day to line the pockets of the few?
Are our lives to be dictated by the sole priority of productivity? This is the challenge to be met. Women, the trade unions and the workers organizations have just suffered a defeat - a defeat which should be recognized and learnt from. *
HAITI Aristide was going to govern alongside coup leader Cédras, his nomination as head of the army being one of the "acts ratified by parliament" since the coup d'état. Urged to give his interpretation of the agreement, Aristide said that, for him, Cédras is a "common criminal" and is thus not covered by the amnesty. He
WAS Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti's deposed president, seeking to divide the perpetrators of the coup d'état which overthrew him when, on
February 23, 1992, in Washington, he signed an agreement with a delegation from the Haitian parliament? In any case, that has been the result. But, among the partisans of Aristide also, the signature of the agreement has enjoyed far from unanimous support.
ARTHUR MAHON
N MARCH 6, judge Nérette, who has occupied Aristide's position since the coup, appeared on television surrounded by the chiefs of the army.
"They will place themselves on the perilous road of unconstitutionality" he declared in an inflammatory speech aimed at those parliamentarians prepared to ratify the Washington agreement.
He was attacking not just Aristide's parliamentary supporters but also those, much more numerous, who, complicit in the September 30, 1991 coup, are now seeking a negotiated solution.
What is it about the Washington agreement that has scandalized Nérette and his cronies? According to the agreement, parliament must "restore Jean-
Bertrand Aristide in the exercise of his
Haiti". Beyond this, parliament must ratify the demand made by Aristide and the OAS (Organization of American
States) to send a civil mission to Haiti.
This already prepared 500-strong body has been described by Nérette as an
"occupation force"
During the initial negotiations held in
Carthagena in November 1991, the parliamentary delegation had refused to allow the name of President Aristide to be mentioned in the text of the resolution. The fact that they have now conceded on this point bears witness to the impasse in which the putschists, incapable of normalizing the situation, find themselves.
And yet the announcement of the agreement was greeted with consternation in the popular circles of Haiti. The disappointment already great in December, when it was learnt that, after all his other proposals had been rejected, Aristide had accepted René Théodore's appointment as prime minister in the event of a successful outcome to the negotiations. The author of this proposal was Alvin Adams, the United States ambassador. He also put forward the name of Marc Bazin, the candidate he had supported during the presidential election. Théodore, general secretary of the PUCH (Unified Party of Haitian Communists), who got 1.8% of the votes in this election, has supported the overthrow of Aristide from the beginning and has been liaising with Alvin Adams for several months.
More surprising is the disappointment at the announcement of an agreement which at least envisages the return of Aristide. The explanation for this is that Aristide had made a number of sizeable concessions, including pledges "to respect the acts passed or ratified by the Haitian parliament" and "a general amnesty, except for common criminals".
No date set for Aristide's return
Furthermore, the agreement provides no specific date for Aristide's return to Haiti. A second agreement, signed on February 25 with Théodore, envisages that a month after the ratification of the agreement by parliament, Aristide, Théodore and the general secretary of the OAS "will meet to prepare the ground for the return of the President of the Republic". But this is no guarantee that Aristide will not have to remain outside Haiti until the end of his presidential mandate.
The Haitian people, who have paid heavily for their opposition to the coup d'état, find these concessions difficult to accept, especially since the international press agencies have been claiming that must go "to prison or into exile"
But even if the accords are applied, who will decide on this point, except for the judicial tribunals which, as is well-known, are rotten to the core? (At least unless a popular mobilization can force them to change their opinion.)