• ES
  • FR
  • EN
JOCI-IYCW
  • Homepage
  • Who are we?
    • IYCW International Team
    • IYCW National Movements
    • IYCW Fundamental Documents
    • Contact Us
  • Actions
    • Representative Actions
    • Campaigns
    • Testmonies
    • Action programmes
  • Publications
    • YCW-Info
    • Statements and Releases
    • International Councils
    • International Plan of Action
    • Activities
    • IYCW Archives
    • Subscribe to IYCW Newsletter
    • Subscribe to IYCW Newsletter
  • Support Us !
  • Media
    • Pictures
    • Videos
  • ICA News

The IYCW celebrates the International Week of Young Workers - April 24th - May 1st, 2020

Details
Also available:  Español (España)   Français (France) 
Created: 25 April 2020

The International Week of Young Workers is celebrated every year by the International Young Christian Workers (IYCW) from the 24th of April to the 1st of May. It was first celebrated in 1970 as the National Week of Young Workers by the Brazilian YCW.

In 1983 during the International Council of IYCW in Madrid Spain, the International Week was adopted as one of the main events at the international level. Since then, the IYCW promoted it in all countries where it is present as a training, organizational, and demanding means for young workers. During this week, the young workers conduct different activities to share and analyse their situations, express their convictions, strengthen friendship, and participate in actions to claim their rights. Therefore, this week ends up with May 1st demonstrations, which will be organised virtually this year.

The working class in Brazil is suffering from serious setbacks that affect everyone especially the youth. Facing the current scenario, we are called to unify our voices and actions. As a mark of this challenge, we invite all young people and all people in solidarity with our struggle for life and decent working condition to join us in prayer:

"Jesus, I offer you this day, my work, difficulties and struggles, my joys and hopes. Grant us, as young people who are training for professional life, that we are looking for work or have work, awareness of our dignity, rights, and our responsibilities. Grant us the grace to witness our love for life and for what is honest and just, the daily dedication to our union and organization, and wisdom to act collectively for a dignified life and working condition. Grant us, at last, fidelity to the mission of working for the Kingdom that is yours, today and forever" - Reginaldo Andrietta, Bishop of Diocese Jales Brazil.

As described by Bishop Reginaldo Andrietta, after 36 years since the establishment of the International Week of Young Workers in the 6th International Council of IYCW in the city of Madrid, today the International YCW continues to develop its struggle through actions " by, among and for young workers, with the aim of achieving a more just and dignified world. During this International Week from April 24 to May 1, we, the activists of International YCW, would like to invite all young workers around the world to continue our struggle and resist against the new challenges we will face after the spread of the COVID19 global pandemic.

Once again, the International YCW is raising its voice to have a:

"Just work, equality, and a dignified life for all young workers around the world."

 

The International Secretariat of the IYCW

YCW Wallonia-Brussels is standing up against fascism and racism

Details
Also available:  Español (España)   Français (France) 
Created: 04 June 2019

jocw-manifantiVB

European, legislative and regional elections were held in Belgium on Sunday 26th May 2019, in which Belgian citizens elected their representatives for the European parliament, the Belgian parliament and regional parliaments.

“Black Sunday”, “Brown Plague” (the name given to Nazism during the Second World War) are the words most frequently used after the results of the ballot. The far right has progressed dramatically in the North of Belgium, causing deep concern among democracy advocates.

 The European elections were held in the 28 countries of the Union, and far-right parties were also winners in France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Hungary and Poland. Those parties are spreading racist, sexist, homophobic and anti-immigrant ideas across the continent.

Read more ...

15 March 2019 — Charleroi, Belgium: Demonstration Against Repression

Details
Also available:  Español (España)   Français (France) 
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.

Read more ...

KAJ Flanders: Stop the Train of Temporary Work Abuses

Details
Also available:  Español (España)   Français (France) 
Created: 02 April 2018

“Terminus Interim. Stop the train of interim-abuses." This was the title of the publicalt activity organized by KAJ (Flanders YCW) in Ostende with the presence of leaders from different regions. The aim of the event was to denounce the reality and violence suffered by young people who are seeking for jobs in temporary work agencies and see their dreams and expectations vanish into thin air.

Most of those young people have just graduated from secondary school or university, they are drop-outs, or have low skills, and they turn to temporary work agencies to help them find a job. In many cases, they face difficulties when they have to deal with the agencies, and KAJ wants to draw the attention of the society, the political authorities, the trade unions and the temporary work agencies themselves. They have reached the local and national press to explain their objectives and present the reality of young workers. KAJ carried out a survey, asking several young people about their reality, and it started to organize actions, including the June 2 event.

The IYCW International Secretariat participated in the action in Ostende. Arlindo de Oliveira (the international treasurer) was there and collected some testimonies from young people explaining their main problems.

 Young Workers Under Pressure

Riensje, a KAJ regional coordinator, and other young activists responsible for the activity in Ostende said: “People who leave school have difficulty in finding a job. They feel pressure. First of all from the agencies when they say you don't have the skills to work for them. So you go back home but when you get there sometimes your family doesn’t believe you and say you are not looking for a job, or just like the agencies they question your capacities. It definitively doesn't help us, it doesn't motivate us.”

Read more ...

YCW Egypt struggles against sexual harrassment

Details
Also available:  Español (España)   Français (France) 
Created: 02 April 2018

alt

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.

Read more ...

The Bicycle Rally of the India YCW

Details
Also available:  Español (España)   Français (France) 
Created: 02 April 2018

jocindia

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.

Salt for Dignity through Solidarity - YCW Haiti’s action presented

Details
Also available:  Español (España)   Français (France) 
Created: 01 February 2019

The Caritas in Veritate Foundation recently presented their tenth working paper. Recent decades have witnessed the consolidation of a global economic system strongly characterised by exclusion and inequality as a result of a largely excessive and misplaced trust in the omnipotence of the markets. Today, the distortions and dysfunctions of the free market economy tend to adversely affect the lives of individuals and communities more than ever before. Consequently, work itself, together with its dignity, is increasingly at risk of losing its value as a “good” for the human person and becoming merely a means of exchange within asymmetrical social relations. This calls us to rethink and reconsider what labour is and what it means for the economy, society, policy.

Read more ...

  1. Young Christian Workers in Egypt redefined Their Future Life and Work
  2. Young People of Flanders Speak Up and Are Ready to Act!
  3. March 15, 2017: “Just Work, not Bullets”
  4. Young Workers March to Berlin on May Day Celebration

Page 1 of 2

  • 1
  • 2
  • Next
  • End

Subscribe to our monthly IYCW Newsletter

Your mailing list:

IYCW Newsletter
Mailing list to receive our monthly Newsletter

Please help us prevent spam, and solve this little math question!

captcha

() Mandatory fields

Information

×

Login

  • Create an account
  • Forgot your username?
  • Forgot your password?

Recent articles

  • The IYCW concludes its 15th International Council and action plan
  • International Conference of NGOs at UNESCO: The IYCW Calls for Empowering Programs for the Youth
  • Statement of the Civil Society Organizations that attended the International Labour Conference
  • November 13, 1882: 140th anniversary of the birth of Cardijn who, through the IYCW, keeps the flame of hope alive in the hearts of millions of young people
  • IYCW 15 th International Council opening ceremony
  • “Called to Act for Just Work”
  • The Economy of Francesco Global Event: Encounter, Bridges, Harvest, and Building a Better Economy Together

(C) International Young Christian Workers - 4, Av. G. Rodenbach - B-1030 Brussels - Phone: +3222421811 - Contact - Register


© 2023 JOCI-IYCW

JOCI-IYCW
  • Español (España)
  • Français (France)
  • English (United Kingdom)
  • Homepage
  • Who are we?
    • IYCW International Team
    • IYCW National Movements
    • IYCW Fundamental Documents
    • Contact Us
  • Actions
    • Representative Actions
    • Campaigns
    • Testmonies
    • Action programmes
  • Publications
    • YCW-Info
    • Statements and Releases
    • International Councils
    • International Plan of Action
    • Activities
    • IYCW Archives
    • Subscribe to IYCW Newsletter
    • Subscribe to IYCW Newsletter
  • Support Us !
  • Media
    • Pictures
    • Videos
  • ICA News
Go Top