By: Flora Partenio, lesbian activist and feminist, teacher at the university (UNAJ)/Cátedra Libre Virginia Bolten and Executive Committee member of DAWN
This article was published in Spanish in Newsletter Nº1, Year 3 of the Argentinean Association for the Research in Women’s History and Gender Studies (AAIHMEG)
In Argentina, a digital platform worker is battered because she claimed her rights. In the south of Spain, Moroccan day laborers working receive threats after reporting violence and abuses. Bangladesh garment workers are fired after joining a strike where they occupied streets and set up barricades. The platform to report workplace abuse and violence on women, lesbians, bisexual and transgender people in Chinese factories is shut down. Domestic workers in gated communities are forced to get off buses because they are “too sweaty” and “stink”. Hotel housekeepers have united under the name “those who clean”1 to challenge exploitation by European hotel chains and report that 70% of them are on medication suffering from ‘occupational diseases’.
This is a picture of the world of work. It reflects migration cycles, global care chains, new forms of colonialism and North-South unfair trade relations.
If we look and focus on what is behind this, we can see the following: Rappi, Uber, Pedidos Ya, Glovo, Mercado Libre, Fivver, Airbnb, Zolvers, Doñana 1998, H&M, Primark, Walmart, Benetton, Mango, Inditex, Zara, Alibaba, Foxconn, Belkin, Iphone, MaryGo, NH, Iberostar and Marriott. But, what do these brands and companies all have in common?
Firstly, they are related to corporate power, either in the modern market of digital economy, the value chains in textile production, agribusiness and extractive economy or through the gentrification or touristification of cities.
Secondly, they appeal to “besiege our lives and the boundaries of the planet”, as economist Amaia Pérez Orozco said — in order to plan a way out of the multidimensional crisis.
Given this context, we need to ask ourselves, how can we expand our understanding of the current transformations in the world of work within the framework of the neoliberal discussions on the “future of work”, the widespread labor reforms both in the region and in the ‘North’, together with the new surge of trade agreements. We need to revisit the lessons learned from the struggles of women, lesbians, gay and transgender people, transvestites and non-binary people in the world of work.
With this as the background, feminist movements are preparing three international strikes to question the traditional definition of work, including care work, amongst other demands. This article seeks to explore the challenges faced by feminists, in the context of living in a world of uncertainty —particularly how it is affecting young people— and labor deregulation that is leading to the so-called fourth industrial revolution. To analyze this further, we need to look at the North-South dynamics.
From Huelva to Nordelta
We can conclude that overcoming the crisis of a system, brings about a deeper social-sexual-racial-colonial division of work, that reinforces principles of segregation and hierarchy. Evidence of this is the “Strawberry Campaign” of Huelva, in Andalusia, where Moroccan women are hired as temporary workers —through agreements between States— to work in the harvesting of berries. More than 19,000 women, between the ages of 18-45, predominantly having worked in the rural sector, either married or widowed and with children, are hired. Thus, employers ensure that at the end of the harvest season, women workers will return to their countries for the families that are waiting for them. Originally, African workers used to harvest the berries, but now the requirement that has been introduced is that the woman worker has to be from Eastern Europe or Morocco.
By the middle of 2018, female temporary workers reported sexual abuses and violence by their employers in a judicial case. As a direct result, a group of women were deported to Morocco while they were waiting for the outcome of the legal process. These reports revealed the serious precariousness that they were in due to their work. They are isolated on farms, working under threat and not understanding the language of their employers. They deal with raised voices and warn the other women that living in Spain is not a dream, but a “nightmare”. Yayo Herrera explains this situation very clearly in her article, The Conflicts of Temporary Harvest Workers, which is an example of the “system in its purest form” -the impact on territories and daily life of an unsustainable, capitalist, racist and heteropatriarchal model of production.
The judicial case was dismissed in December so many feminist and antiracist movements marched and protested against this resolution in the legal process. In preparation for 8M, feminist organizations in Andalusia have been mobilizing to challenge the far-right Vox parliamentary representation and to mainstream an antiracist and anticolonial perspective on 8M. They are demanding the closing of all the Immigrant Detention Centers, expressing that the Foreign Act be repealed and calling for solidarity of female temporary harvest workers.
This dangerous situation is very similar for domestic workers. In Argentina, only 20% are working in the formal sector out of a million and a half in spite of there being legislation in place. Employers can benefit from income tax exemptions, however the audits carried out by AFIP, revealed that out of 1,051 domestic workers in gated communities and luxury tower residences, 46% are not in formal employment. In addition, those working in Partido de Tigre in Nordelta, face additional obstacles because they are not allowed to travel in the same bus that transports their employers. They are accused of “smelling,” “talking excessively” and “sweating,” yet, they are in charge of cleaning, preparing food and looking after children in these neighborhoods. This shows how, once again, care work is a structural pillar that makes this system work. This kind of work has no rights attached and does not represent either civil nor economic citizenship (Pérez Orozco, 2018) because there is no social protection coverage, formality or recognition and —as we can see in the Nordelta case— workers are segregated and prevented from using transportation to/from the houses in the private-domestic sphere where they earn a wage.
This social-sexual-racial division of work becomes more profound and reflects a reorganization of heteropatriarchy that in turn benefits “competitive” economies and income or keeps on accumulating prestige and power. So, from Huelva to Nordelta, women workers resist the siege.
From Bangladesh to Pigué
It has been more than five years since the catastrophic collapse of RANA PLAZA where 1,134 garment workers died and thousands were injured. The President of the Bangladesh Independent Garment Workers Union Federation (BIGUF) affirms that the government and companies “have forgotten the lessons of Rana Plaza”, because there are still no safety conditions in the workplace.
From the end of 2018, to early January 2019, workers (mostly women) from Dhaka and its surrounding suburbs organized yet another massive strike, mobilized and occupied the streets, demanding better wages and safety conditions for those at work. As a result of this, 200 workers lost their jobs and the freedom of association was strongly attacked. The accumulation of this labor-intensive industry involves more than 3,500,000 workers —mostly women— with 80% of the production being for export. Bangladesh competes with China, Cambodia, India and Vietnam to hold the position of second largest exporter of garments, by keeping wages low and making little investment in risk prevention at work.
On the opposite side of the world, the struggle of textile workers in Bangladesh resembles the resistance offered by cooperative workers of Argentina. Since late 2015, these workers challenged the opening of imports, tariff increases and the crisis of the domestic market. Alternative forms of production and cooperatives (for example, Cooperativa Textiles Pigüé) have been developed and promoted by popular economy experiences and by those employees that took over failed companies.
The case of Cooperativa Textiles Pigué is the story of fifteen years of “occupation, resistance and production”, where workers took control of the space, nobody lost their jobs and they are preparing for the International Women´s Day. This year, they will march to a popular square, and will organize a day of action with workshops led by women workers of the cooperative. Their demonstration calls for the State to respond to their demands: “We want to embrace all women workers on this day, we wish to be able to raise more awareness and to build solidarity-based alternatives collectively. We want to fight against neoliberalism and to defend our rights, to be able to overcome fears together, trusting in the power and value of our voices and of our actions”.
This international call for a strike poses the challenge to continue building bridges to connect with feminist agendas by connecting experiences of peasants, migrants, workers, cooperatives of transgender collectives. Feminist economics analysis can be useful in this process.
8M and beyond
In the face of this world of work, marked by uncertainty and the “direct besiege of life”, we stand against, we rise up and we say “Enough!”
We can and should take note of key arguments that go beyond 8M demands and that eventually will help us to identify new tools and revisit our tools of political struggle. Definitions of work shall be built based on the commonalities of diverse analysis based on gender, race or other categories, which will give rise to new questions. If this system promotes the accumulation of capital, income, power and prestige, how do we face these accumulation patterns through feminisms? Is it possible to observe these patterns within the same organizational rationale? Where is the resistance positioned when we fight inside unions — where are the heteropatriarchal spaces? What is the cost in order to include our agendas —feminist, antiracist, migrant, lesbian, transgendered, nonbinary, gay— in the package of demands? In the face of the so-called virtualization of trade union action, what are the questions formulated by feminisms? And, more specifically, given the situation in Argentina, how do we sustain our fight against the elimination of the social security system and the labor reforms? Such labor reform extends parent’s leave for a few and does not consider a right to care for all the people? How do we continue building bridges to connect popular economy struggles with feminist agendas?
(1) In Spanish, “Las Kellys”.
Continue reading:
Herrero, Yayo (2018) “Strawberry in Huelva: 46 calories every 100 grams”, en https://www.eldiario.es/zonacritica/fresa-Huelva-calorias-gramos_6_784681555.html
Pérez Orozco, Amaia (2018) “Foreword”, Gonzalo Fernández. Market or Democracy Trade Agreements in 21st. Century Capitalism, Icaria, Madrid.
Rodríguez Enriquéz, Corina (2018) “Los aportes de la economía feminista a la agenda feminista en América Latina”, en Aportes de la economía feminista desde Argentina.
ANÁLISIS Nº 27, FES, Buenos Aires: http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/argentinien/14609.pdf
Scasserra, Sofía (2018) “Web Platforms (and what to demand through Latin American unions)”, IMT, UNTREF, Buenos Aires.