The future starts today, not tomorrow. Pope Francis
The Network of the Catholic Inspired Organizations, together with the Commission of the Bishops Conference of the European Union (COMECE), organized panel debates at the European Economic and Social Commission last November 27, 2018. The Conference discussed what the future of work looks like for the next generation in the midst of digitalization and robotization, as we know that the world of work is facing many transformative changes, accelerating globalization and the rise of artificial intelligence on the one hand, and ecological challenges and a rise in unemployment on the other hand.
Various panel experts underlined the importance of work from an inter-religious dialogue perspective, and John Harley of Eurofound presented a research on the issue of accessibility to work, unemployment, opportunities and threats. The statement of Ms. Sarah Prenger, the International President of the International Young Christian Workers (IYCW) who read testimonies and realities from many young workers in Europe, describing the challenges they face every day, was a good opportunity to confront those data and research.
The young woman worker leaves home at four o’clock in the morning every day. She has to cross the whole city to get to work. She travels around two hours by bus, and then she has to walk almost half an hour to reach the community where she teaches children of low-income families. The neighborhood where she works is poor, marginalized, and the rates of violence are high.
Women have been raped on the stretch of road she has to walk through, and the buses she uses to get to and leave that place are those which, according national statistics, register the most armed attacks and assaults, as well as the most accidents caused by the drivers themselves.
She has to make the same trip in the other direction to go home, but this time, in even worse conditions: in buses that are overcrowded, progressing very slowly in long lines of cars driving through the city.
“In the world today, there is a wide gap between the decent life everyone is supposed to be entitled to and the difficulty we have to meet our most basic needs,” said the YCW Asia Pacific (ASPAC) team in a statement it has recently published.
The ASPAC YCW mentions appalling statistics from international institutions. For instance, according to the World Bank, around 50% of the world population lives with less than US$2.50 a day while in Asia alone, even in the least industrialized countries, you need at least USD15 to 20 per day to meet basic needs. Around the world, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty. The ILO reported that about 5.1 billion people (75% of the world population) are not covered by adequate social security, while according to UN-Habitat, 2.6 billion people do not have access to adequate sanitation and 884 million people lack access to adequate sources of drinking water.
The Reality of Young Workers in Asia
The statement includes some testimonies from young workers in Asian countries.
“I am working in a construction field and I am a daily wage worker. I am 20 years old, yet I am the one responsible to take care of my family. I have 3 younger brothers and sisters whom I am supporting for their education and family food expenses. I receive a salary of PhP250/day (US$ 5). With this salary, we can’t even afford to have a good meal three times a day. There are days that we eat rice with magic syrup (artificial cooking powder), adding water in it.” - Jomarie Navarro, Philippines
Promoting the Rights of Informal Workers and Unemployed Youth
The India YCW has been carrying out a campaign for an increase in the minimum wage of informal workers and for the right to employment for the unemployed. In order to raise awareness among the civil society on those issues and bring those demands to the attention of the local government, the India YCW organised a bicycle rally covering four rural areas (Pallappatti, Ethiload, Silukuvarpatti and Nilakottai) around Dindigul in the district of Madurai, Tamil Nadu, on 16th February.
32 members of the YCW took part in the bicycle rally, holding placards with their demands and explaining the objectives of the rally and their demands to the public through distributing handbills and holding street corner meetings.
The demands the YCW put forward towards the local, state and central government were the following:
- Implement the social protection policies and programs for informal workers;
- Increase the wage of appalam making workers from Rs. 18 to Rs. 30 per kilo;
- Set up a perfume factory in Dindigul and give jobs to the unemployed;
- Set up monitoring bodies for the proper implementation of the 100 days job per year program;
- Increase the salary of workers employed in the 100 days job per year program from Rs. 132 to Rs. 200 per day;
- Increase the number of 100 days per year to 200 days per year.
At the end of the rally, the YCW leaders met with the district administrator of Nilakottai, presented their demands and asked for a follow-up by the state and central governments. Representatives of two organisations participated in the rally and supported the demands of YCW. Around 800 workers and people were reached out through this rally.
Last Friday 15th February, the International Secretariat (IS) team members met with representatives of World Solidarity Movement (WSM) as part of the process of integration of the new IS members. The meeting took place at the IYCW office in Schaerbeek, Belgium.
The WSM representatives were Bart, Ben and Jeroen. Bart and Ben are responsible for WSM’s international action department while Jeroen is a north-south cooperation program coordinator. All the IS outgoing and new team members were present at the meeting.
There were two strategic items on the agenda of the meeting: international political action and the cooperation program between WSM and the IYCW.
The Egypt YCW Fights Sexual Harassment
The IYCW international team was pleased to welcome Sabah Eskandar, a former member of Egypt YCW, who visited the international secretariat in Brussels on Saturday February 9th.
In her visit, Sabah was accompanied by Milad Mikhael, a former international team member for the Africa region (1998-2002) and by George, an Egyptian activist.
The meeting, which lasted about 2 hours, provided the opportunity to discuss the current situation in Egypt and YCW in this post-revolution period. Sabah explained that conditions in Egypt now are not really stable in all spheres of life. The change in the country’s government did not significantly improve the social and political situation. The prices of goods are higher and people are increasingly suffering.
You may know the story of a king of ancient times. He wanted to know how his people would react when faced with a challenge or obstacle. Therefore, the king placed a huge rock (boulder) on a roadway. Then he hid himself and watched to see if anyone would remove the huge rock. Some of the king's wealthiest merchants and courtiers came by and simply walked around it. Many loudly blamed the king for not keeping the roads clear, but none of them did anything about getting the stone out of the way.
Then a peasant came along carrying a load of vegetables. Upon approaching the boulder, the peasant laid down his burden and tried to move the stone to the side of the road. After much pushing and straining, he finally succeeded. After the peasant picked up his load of vegetables, he noticed a purse lying on the road where the huge rock had been. The purse contained many gold coins and a note from the king indicating that the gold was for the person who removed the boulder from the roadway.
Here in this story, the peasant noticed the obstacle or challenge (the huge rock), he did not walk simply around the obstacle, did not blame the king, did not run away from the obstacle but pushed the rock to the side of the road after so many efforts and finally got the gold coins. This story could be taken as a classical example of how a challenge can provide an opportunity to improve our working and living conditions.
- Leave no young women workers behind: End gender-based discrimination at work and in the society! End all forms of violence!
- Young Christian Workers in Egypt redefined Their Future Life and Work
- ILC 2017: IYCW & WSM Joint Statement on Labour Migration
- International Domestic Workers’ Day: A Testimony from Pakistan
- Migrant Workers: The Voice of an Overseas Filipino Worker
- PANAF: Taking part in the Development of South-South Regional Cooperation
- Young Workers March to Berlin on May Day Celebration
- March 15, 2017: “Just Work, not Bullets”
- The challenge of the digital revolution - The IYCW at the 2016 International Conference of NGOs
- “Reshaping the Future of Work in the midst of Digitalization, Precarity and Unemployment: Action and Commitment of Young Workers”