Women organising women in the West Bank - the new kindergarten workers union

Women organising women in the West Bank - the new kindergarten workers union

'Of course they will not accept us and they will try to resist and maybe we will even run the risk of being fired, but we want to make a difference so we will keep on going.'

Jenin is one of the largest cities in the West Bank, situated between Nablus and Nazareth in the north. On a Saturday morning, I met with a group of ten women kindergarten teachers from Jenin who had been working together for over a year to organise the sector and to set up a brand new union. Today the women were gathering to plan for their forthcoming conference to formally establish the new Jenin kindergarten trade union. We were joined by Hassan Abu Salah, a Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) local organiser, who has been supporting the women as they develop the union. Hassan kicked off the group meeting by giving me some background to the sector and the issues that workers face.

Hassan: In Jenin we have 160 kindergartens employing 600 workers. Some are run by NGOs and charities and some are privately run. 90 per cent of the workers are women; there are just a few workers like kindergarten bus drivers who are men. We have been working to establish a trade union for kindergarten workers.

Hassan: In 2009, we established the first conference. Through field work, we realised how bad conditions were in the sector, in comparison to others, and that there was a need for a union. The first conference was 30 January 2009. We elected a temporary administrative committee and we will hold a second conference on 25 December 2010. This meeting today is to follow-up with preparations for the conference. At the first conference we had 350 people; at the second conference we hope to have even higher numbers and we are making field visits to encourage people to come along.

TUC: What are the conditions like in the kindergarten sector?

Hiyam: 80 per cent of us are university graduates but we are talking about this group of workers with very low salaries: an average of 300-500 shekels per month (£53-£88).

Amal: We have very few rights to holidays or leave. I have been working for 20 years. I have three children and when I had my children, each time I was given only one week unpaid maternity leave. If you are ill, it is impossible, you have to continue, or you have to bring someone else in to replace you.

Fida: Even if you have flu!

Menan: The summer holidays are not paid either. We only get seven days paid a year to cover festivals such as Eid.

Rema: It's not just the low salaries that we are talking about. It is about all the responsibilities that we have to take on too. During the day we have to be a teacher, cleaner, and accompany the bus driver to collect and drop off the children.

Fida: And we are personally liable as well for the safety of the children.

Rema: Through the trade union, we are now trying to get health insurance coverage but we have no other insurance cover. [Palestinian labour law says that all employers should cover employees with health insurance but many do not.] Palestinian law says that each child should have one square metre of space but this is not implemented. As a result, we have 25-40 children in the class and we are the only adults.

TUC: Despite these terrible conditions, how do you feel about the job? Do you enjoy it and did you choose to work in a kindergarten?

Amal: Yes I enjoy the work.

Horia: One of the greatest things is to see the smile of children and their happiness.

Rema: From my side, I wished to work with children in a kindergarten. It is not an easy job but if we have good conditions, it will be great work and we can really make results with children. You can build something, guide them, and give them direction in their lives. Sometime we have children who are very aggressive, some who are very spirited, some who are disabled. We succeed to make real changes in their lives. We see for example that disabled children who attend kindergarten, are much more able to attend public school later on.

Menan: I like this job a lot, even if I am stressed, exhausted, I forget this when I am at work. Children are a great thing in our life.

TUC: And how did you go about setting up the new trade union?

Rema: We had a first conference when we started to make field visits. Out of 600 workers in the Jenin region, at least 500 have now already participated or been active in some form of our activities. Now about 370 workers are members and we are getting more organised. We are a group of 25 women from the administrative committee who are leading this.

Hiyam: Through the first conference and meetings, we realised more than 90 per cent of workers did not know about the labour law. Through meetings and workshops, we started to know our rights and the labour law. What we are now looking for is an organised union to be established to carry on changing our conditions.

Mena: And we also want to start negotiations on a collective bargaining agreement (CBA).

TUC: Do you have a sense of how the employers will respond to your request for a CBA?

Hiyam: We expect in the beginning that the employers will not want to recognise the new trade union.

Amal: Of course they will not accept us and they will try to resist and maybe we will even run the risk of being fired, but we want to make a difference so we will keep on going.

Mena: The problem is that the number of kindergartens is too high and there are not enough children or demand, so this acts to lower wages and create competition in the sector.

Menan: What will we do if they reject us? We will continue our work.

Fida: Even if we are not successful ourselves, we will open the door for others in the future.

Rema: We will continue but if we do not make real progress, people will leave the trade union.

Horia: We expect that as there is a body to represent the kindergarten owners, we can therefore expect to have equal negotiations and to reach a CBA with them.

TUC: Do you know what is happening in other regions outside Jenin? Are there other local kindergarten unions being set up there too?

Hiyam: This summer, we held a national meeting in Ramallah for all the representatives from other regions to discuss about the possibility of a national union. We are already established here in Jenin and it is important for other local organisations to get national support. [According to the PGFTU constitution, there needs to be three local unions established before a union can apply for national status.]

Fida: We have had very good support and guidance from the PGFTU - it is good and strong support.

Rema: We consider that the pinnacle of being strong is to have a strong national union.

Hassan: When we organised the meeting in Ramallah, our goal was to represent the Jenin area to explain about the first conference and to encourage others to follow us. We received information from other regions. Now before we started the process to implement the full union here, no one talked about kindergarten workers. Now we've started, the media are interested, government ministries and civil society have started to talk about this sector, and we have raised awareness. Before that, as the PGFTU, we received no complaints from kindergarten workers, but now we have several cases which we take up with the employers. Employers are now starting to deal with the union as a fact and negotiate with us.

Rema: Overall, we have 100 activists already.

TUC: You've obviously had amazing success in a really short period of time. What approaches have you been using to reach out to workers, to your colleagues in kindergartens? What has worked well, have you found?

Hiyam: Firstly we established the committee through the conference and then we divided the region into sectors and each one of us has an area where we collect info about the sector, the workers details and their addresses, so we can start to contact them face to face. We explain the aims of the trade union and then make an official invite to them to join our activities.

Menan: The conditions of the workers are very bad. When the workers hear from us that we will try to do something, we immediately get a response.

Rema: One of the reasons for them to join was to get help with particular cases or problems.

Mena: When workers see the practical support a union can offer, that creates trust.

Menan: One year ago, I followed a case personally. A number of workers were fired from a kindergarten. They had also been receiving different salaries to each other and this had been going on for two years. We made a complaint on their behalf and then we followed up. We could not get them re-instated but we managed to secure them their backdated pay that they were owed according to the labour law.

Amal: When I had my second child, I was actually fired, but I contacted the union and I was able to return to work.

Hassan: There was another worker from a village who worked at a kindergarten connected to the local authority. They lowered her salary and then threatened to fire her. In the end we managed to make sure that she was able to continue her work and maintain her salary levels.

We slowly wound up the meeting: the union needed to continue their preparations for their forthcoming conference and I was due at another meeting. But the TUC plans to follow up with the Jenin kindergarten workers union and we will be in touch with the PGFTU in the new year, to find out how the conference went and what are the next steps for the union.

You can read more about the work of the PGFTU to organise and support women here

You can read more about the transport sector union and their experiences under occupation here

You can read more about the health sector union, poverty wages and the gender pay gap here

Vicky Cann

vcann@tuc.org.uk