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A visit to the West Bank: impressions and inspirations

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A visit to the West Bank: impressions and inspirations

I've recently returned from a fantastic visit to Nablus in West Bank, part of the OccupiedTerritories of Palestine. The purpose of my trip was to visit the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions (the PGFTU - our sister national centre in the West Bank), to attend the PGFTU women's conference, to understand the situation facing working women and men, and to have detailed discussions about how the TUC, our charity TUC Aid, and the PGFTU can work together more closely in the future.

PGFTU logo


The PGFTU is based in Nablus, in the heart of the West Bank, a city which can trace its origins back 6000 years and which is now home to 200,000 people.

Nablus


A few years ago, Nablus was at the heart of resistance to the Israeli occupation and the effects of this can still be seen today, in terms of buildings pock-marked with bullets, memorials to dead civilians or fighters on street corners, and empty spaces where local families have not been able to afford to re-build demolished buildings. Today Nablus is a vibrant and bustling city, proud of its recent and ancient past.

The PGFTU can trace its origins back to 1924; now it has 13 affiliated unions covering private sector employees in the West Bank. The employment situation is very, very difficult across Palestine, especially in the Gaza Strip, where the PGFTU operates but in an informal way. The PGFTU building in Gaza was destroyed by an Israeli air raid in 2008.

According to the ILO, in Gaza, the unemployment rate is amongst the highest in the world at 39 per cent, with 70 per cent of the population living in deep poverty on less than US$1 a day. In the West Bank, unemployment rates are estimated to be at least 20 per cent. The employment situation is further complicated with 60,000 Palestinians working legally or illegally in Israel, and by the presence of illegal Israeli settlements across the West Bank. In the absence of other options, some Palestinians work in the settlements and the PGFTU works with NGOs to organise these workers, while at the same time calling for a boycott of Israeli settlement goods, a boycott which the TUC supports.

For women, the rates of unemployment are far higher than for men. The ILO reports that: 'A profound employment crisis is affecting Palestinian workers throughout the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Workers work less than full time, lose their jobs and search for alternatives that are inadequately remunerated. Women have very low levels of labour force participation and those that do participate are segregated into a few sectors. The security situation and structure of employment have also contributed to Palestinian women's exclusion from paid and protected employment. Currently women's labour force participation is at a low of 15.5 per cent.'

PGFTU women's department conference


The second PGFTU women's department conference was held in the packed conference hall of the PGFTU headquarters in Nablus. Many women from across the different sectors participated in the discussions, standing up to tell their personal stories of life in the workplace, interspersed with presentations from the Ministry for Women, the Ministry of Labour, and the ILO. Unfortunately, only women from the West Bank were able to attend. Activists from the Gaza Strip had hoped to participate, but after two months of trying, were unable to get travel permits.

Participation at the PGFTU women's department conference


The TUC was invited to speak and I was pleased to read a solidarity message from the TUC 's Women's Committee: 'We recognise that working women in Palestine face many hardships, difficulties and injustices specific to the Palestinian struggle for an independent, sovereign state. The TUC Women's Committee also recognises that many of the struggles faced by women across the world, including in Palestine and the United Kingdom, are shared. Women across the world face poverty, inequality, violence and discrimination. We hope that this conference can build on the encouraging progress in increasing the representation and voice of women in the Palestinian trade union movement.'

Over the two days, the conference made a series of recommendations which will form the focus of a strategy for the coming four years. Top of the list is the need to increase the percentage of women in work, in unions and in the leadership of unions. Additionally, many women spoke of the need for more labour inspectors to visit workplaces and to ensure that existing labour law and health and safety requirements were being properly implemented. There were also passionate calls for improved social security provision and for a national minimum wage. Too many women, it was said, were earning only 300 shekels a month (about £52).

After the conference I was able to speak to some members of the women's department (which acts like a women's committee within the PGFTU) to get their reactions to the conference.

Amal Ibrahim Ahmed Fityahi


Amal Ibrahim Ahmed Fityahi used to be a textiles worker from Jericho but is now one of four women who sit on the national executive of the PGFTU. She said: 'I have been really happy with this conference. What I have witnessed has given me hope and strengthens me to continue to work to increase membership. We have been preparing for this conference for three months and I was one of the team working on it. I think it has given women a chance to break the ice with each other to express themselves, to concentrate on social justice issues, anti-discrimination, health and safety and to look forward for the future.'

Neda Abuzant, from the transport sector, was also helping to organise the conference. 'As the PGFTU coordinator in Nablus for the women's department, I follow and coordinate all women's activities between the different branches. For me the conference was really successful. There was a lot of good coordination and communication between our different unions. Each union has a women's committee and we established the department to join us all together.'

Amny Remawi has been a trade unionist since 1978. She was the first women to join the national executive of the PGFTU and during her working life she has been a member of several different sectors. Right now, she is the chair of the women's department. We met in Ramallah, a few days after the conference had ended, and she ran through with me the key outcomes of the conference and her hopes about how they will be taken forward. She also told me about a recent gender audit that the ILO had conducted with the PGFTU, on its structures, policies and workings.

Amny Remawi


'The most important recommendation of the audit was that the issue of gender is not one just for the women's department, but is one that needs to be recognised and adopted across the whole PGFTU. Many male trade unionists think that if there is a women's department, it can deal with 'women's issues' and they are not the wider responsibility of the PGFTU! So the ILO has recommended to us that we need to raise awareness of gender issues across the PGFTU. We have started to do this and recently, 17 members of the national executive (there are 24 in total) attended an intensive training course on gender.' She is hopeful that the national executive will prioritise the implementation of the ILO gender audit in the future.

During the visit to the West Bank, I had the privilege of meeting with many different sectoral trade unions. I was able to travel to Jenin to meet a brand new kindergarten workers union; to sit in on a branch meeting of the transport workers union in Nablus; and to visit a hospital to meet very low paid workers in the health sector.

Throughout the trip, I met committed women and men trade union organisers, all of whom, with PGFTU support, were demanding a fairer deal for working people, their families, and the wider communities that they live in. The West Bank is not like anywhere else you will visit; you cannot divorce the Israeli occupation and the wider security situation from the employment crisis. In fact the effects of the occupation seem to permeate every aspect of Palestinian life and society.

But as elsewhere around the world, when working people get together, organise themselves ad speak with one voice, change is possible.

The new kindergarten workers' union in Jenin is proof of this. In less than a year, the effects of their work are already beginning to show.

'Before we start 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.'

As for the future, the members of the women's department seem optimistic. As Amal told me: 'If we have another conference in 2013, I hope that we will have higher participation of women in our trade unions, and a higher participation from men in our conference and that they will take us seriously. I hope that we will have ended discrimination issues and tackled the gender pay gap.'

Over the coming months, the TUC will continue its discussions with the PGFTU to find concrete ways to work together to promote Decent Work for women and men across Palestine.

You can read more about the brand new Kindergarten workers union and their plans for the future 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

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