On May 1st, the International YCW asserts the right to live and work in dignity!

Details: Also available:; Created: 03 May 2019

133 years after the Chicago events, here we are celebrating our “International Working-Class Day” together on 1^st May. For the International YCW, May 1^st is the day we raise the flag of our struggles and demands along with the worker movement at the international level. Every year from 24^th April to 1^st May, we organize an International Week of Young Workers (IWYW) with activities which have a political and training impact in countries around the world.

Decades of struggles by the international worker movement have gone by and the IYCW, through its actions, has taken part in them. However, the achievements we have accomplished in a number of countries over the years are now regressing. This regression is due to new conditions of exploitation at work that have an impact on young workers’ lives and undermine workers’ struggles: increase in working hours while salaries are decreasing, new jobs on virtual platforms, unequal rights between men and women and pre-determined gender roles at work, high rate of informal work in the world but lack of social security for workers in the sector…

Work-Free Sunday is a Right!

Details: Also available:; Created: 13 April 2019

For years now, YCW Bavaria has been actively campaigning for the protection of Sunday to be free from work. It aims for the workers to have time to spend with family, play soccer with friends, establish relationships with the community, go to Church, participate in social voluntary work and build organizations. The action is against big shops that open on Sunday and some shops that extend the closing hours until 11 in the evening.

Sundays and legal holidays are defined as days of rest protected by the Basic Law and the Bavarian Constitution. However, some shops open during sales periods, Sunday markets and feast days, and on other special occasions, taking advantage of community activities to open.

CAJ Germany celebrates Equal Pay Day on March 2019

Details: Also available:; Created: 06 April 2019

Equal Pay Day stands for the gender pay gap between women and men, which according to the Federal Statistical Office is 21 percent in Germany. This large pay gap means that women work for free until 18 March, i.e. 77 days, while men have been paid for their work since 1 January. Thus, the gross hourly wage for men is 4.41 euros more than for women. Germany lies thereby in the European comparison far behind. Positive examples in Europe are Romania, Italy and Belgium, which have gender pay gaps of less than 7 percent.

CAJ women see a huge problem here and do not want to accept this: Jasmin is angry when someone says that the pay gap doesn't even exist if more women work full-time or if they go less into social professions. She wonders why it is still the case that social activities are so badly paid.

15 March 2019 — Charleroi, Belgium: Demonstration Against Repression

Details: Also available:; Created: 14 March 2019

Charleroi demonstration March 15th

Discrimination and racism on the part of the police, repression of people’s movements, migrants hunting, tracking down of homeless people, widespread filing of personal records… It is most urgent to get organized and denounce the security logic. The Stop Repression campaign has been mobilizing against police violence and state repression for eight years now. We hope many of you will join us in the streets of Charleroi on March 15 for the International Day Against Police Violence!

Stop repression of migrations!

Subject to a repression organized at the highest levels of the state, the only crime of refugees and undocumented people is to look for a better future. They are arrested with brutality and placed in closed centers pending deportation. Closed centers are real prisons, and detention conditions are so bad that some migrants attempt to take their own life. Nowadays, even families with children can end up in a closed center. Nobody is spared by those racist security measures taken by the authorities.

Solidarity is also criminalized: legal proceedings against people who host them, violence against citizens who legally film arbitrary arrests. Migrants hunting is carried out to the detriment of mankind, the rule of law and solidarity among peoples. It sometimes ends up in a tragic bloodshed, like on 17 May 2018 when a police officer, still free today, killed little Mawda. To give itself the tools to implement its inhuman policies, the current government decided to build three new centers, including one in Wallonia, in Jumet. Faced with the state’s headlong rush, let’s demand the closure of all closed centers, the regularization of all undocumented people, and the freedom of movement for migrants.

Young Christian Workers Raise their Voice, Not Only On Women’s Day!

Details: Also available:; Created: 09 March 2019

109 years ago, the Second International Conference of Women was held in Copenhagen, the demand for universal suffrage for all women was reiterated and, at the proposal of Clara Zetkin, 8 March was proclaimed International Women's Day. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the labour movement maintained a traditional patriarchal position on women's equality and demands. It was in the middle of the nineteenth century when the women's movements became stronger, with the struggle for women's suffrage, the demand for equality, the denunciation of social, family and labour oppression.

I am a young Nicaraguan, I am 28 years old. I have no children and I live in my parents' house. “I’m currently employed at the Hansae export-processing zone in Nicaragua in a garment factory. I have been working there as a machine operator for 1 year. My work schedule is from 7 am to 5 pm, with a 30-minute break to have lunch.

In Nicaragua, gender violence is a daily reality. The number of femicide cases is increasing. “We are being killed" in our homes. We are educated to assume a role of domestic, we assume responsibilities that society imposes on us culturally for being women: "cooking, washing, raising children, cleaning, and so on.” Every day, when I commute from home to work, I am subjected to sexual harassment in the street. Society sees this practice as normal and harmless, though it is a form of gender-based violence, and I really feel I’m harassed when walking in public.

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