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HIV – lessons from the shop floor

Issue date
World AIDS Day 2012

Speech by Kay Carberry

3 December 2012

To mark World AIDS Day, the TUC held a seminar on Monday 3 December bringing together Nigerian trade unionist Maureen Onyia and international trade union and AIDS campaign speakers to talk about what can be done to promote workplace solutions. TUC Assistant General Secretary Kay Carberry gave the following speech introducing that issue, but touching also on the campaign against Uganda's anti-gay legislation and LGBT rights in the Commonwealth.

CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY

A very warm welcome to you all. And a very special welcome to Maureen Onyia from the Nigeria Labour Congress, our project coordinator, who has travelled all the way from Abuja to be with us today

We have organized events to mark the World AIDS Day for several years, but today's seminar has a special importance. This is an opportunity to draw lessons from our involvement in the fight against HIV/AIDS so that we can apply them to future action.

Our contribution to the fight against AIDS is not limited to project work alone.

We have contributed to the campaign for more resources for the fight against the pandemic, and also to global policy developments.

We have taken part in the last four International AIDS Conferences, and made sure that trade unionists from developing countries have been there too. In 2012, the TUC sponsored delegates from the Nigeria Labour Congress and the Ghana Trades Union Congress to the Washington DC conference.

In September, we worked with the International HIV Alliance and others to press the Commonwealth to make it easier to combat AIDS by outlawing discrimination against LGBT communities.

I will say a little more about stigma and discrimination later in the context of Nigeria, but elsewhere in Africa, the TUC has been backing the campaign against the anti-gay law being proposed in Uganda, and whilst we are of course pleased to see that the death penalty has been removed, the campaign against this discriminatory legislation must continue.

But today we want to concentrate on building on our experience of workplace initiatives with our trade union partners in developing countries in Africa. In particular, the Building Workplace Capacity to Combat HIV/AIDS Project which we implemented in partnership with the Nigeria Labour Congress and six of its affiliates.

I should thank the Department for International Development for their funding for this three-year workplace initiative.

Project successes

Let me say a few words on what we achieved, demonstrating the effectiveness of workplace-based action in combating HIV/AIDS.

Our initial target was to test the HIV status of about 9,000 workers in two and half years through a Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT) facility.

However, due to high demand, a second VCT centre had to be opened and by the end of June this summer when the project finished, we had exceeded our target by a huge margin, testing 23,000 workers. I am sure that Maureen will say more about the impact of the VCT clinics organised under the Project.

We trained 431 union officials in counselling colleagues on HIV prevention and, in particular, about collective bargaining to protect and promote the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS.

An information and education campaign was run by trade union officials trained under the Project. Awareness-raising was particularly successful in overcoming workers' initial reticence to go for VCT. Lunch time talks at workplaces were well attended, popular and informative. Indeed, peer education was largely responsible for increased understanding of the modes of transmission of the disease among workers and their families.

The circulation of information and education material developed under the Project played a key role in this. In all, we estimate that we managed to reach some 600,000 members of the six participating unions, their family members and workplace participants. These are very impressive figures for one project.

Stigma and discrimination

But prevention and testing can only go so far.

Stigma and discrimination against those with real or perceived HIV status are perhaps the most formidable barriers to prevention, stopping people from understanding how to prevent the disease and discouraging people from seeking treatment.

Our Project sought to address the issue in a number of ways.

  • unions were encouraged to develop their own workplace policies on HIV/AIDS and implement them, with technical advice from the TUC;
  • unions worked closely with other stakeholders in the campaign on the employment rights of workers affected by the disease;
  • they lobbied the Nigerian Government and relevant government agencies like the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA) to introduce legislation to outlaw discrimination on the grounds of HIV status and to implement the 2010 ILO Recommendation on HIV/AIDS and the World of Work; and
  • unions negotiated collective bargaining agreements with specific clauses on HIV.

There have been setbacks. Although the anti-Discrimination Bill was adopted by the National Assembly, it was not passed by the Senate in time for it to become law.

So the NLC and affiliates have had to re-activate the lobbing and advocacy campaign on the Bill as part of their efforts to persuade the authorities to take effective measures to implement the ILO Recommendation.

The impact of the workplace

In sum, we are pleased with the outcomes of the Project and feel vindicated in our conviction that workplace has a vital role to play in the fight against the disease.

The adoption of Recommendation 200 by the ILO Conference was an important milestone in this regard.

Since it was adopted two years ago, the Political Declaration on HIV/AIDS adopted by the United Nations General Assembly Special Session in 2011 makes specific reference to Recommendation 200 and acknowledges the role of workplace in the global response to the disease.

So far, the ILO Recommendation has formed the basis for national workplace policies, sectoral policies and legislation in more than 30 countries. And it has been cited in at least five court cases on the rights of HIV-positive workers who faced unfair dismissal.

HIV is a workplace issue in that two out of three people living with HIV go to work every day, contribute to the economy and continue to care for their families and communities.

In many workplaces, communications systems are already in place for disseminating information. Existing structures, networks and facilities can be used for prevention, care and support services.

And unions, as workers' own organisations, have the respect and trust of people at work which means we can play a major part in controlling and eventually ending the pandemic which causes so much pain and suffering.

This seminar is about how we can leverage that influence to make sure we play our part more effectively in future. I look forward to hearing from our expert speakers and from everyone here about how we do that.

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