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From Poverty to Power Green, Oxfam 2008 - weman

From Poverty to Power Green, Oxfam 2008 - weman

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FROM POVERTY TO POWERand Palau have in common is that they are tiny Pacific island nationsthat have no labour code and are not members of the ILO. 115Infringing workers’ rights and limiting their compensation isincreasingly common in developed countries as well. For a short timein his<strong>to</strong>ry, thanks largely <strong>to</strong> a vocal trade union movement, a fewprivileged workers won the right <strong>to</strong> be compensated for most of thecosts of maintaining the labour force and of caring for past and futureworkers: health care,a monthly salary (paying for rest time at weekends),compensation for injury and old age, and paid leave for illness, maternity/paternity, breast-feeding, funerals, religious events, and holidays. Insome cases, employers and the state also paid for training/retraining,job search, or removal costs when workers were transferred oreconomic restructuring <strong>to</strong>ok place. In both developed and developingcountries, that era now risks being consigned <strong>to</strong> his<strong>to</strong>ry, degrading thequality of work and the lives of workers.Flexible labour policies entail costs <strong>to</strong> society in terms of the healthand education of future generations of workers, and even in the qualityand reliability of production. Without a stable income or access <strong>to</strong>social protection, workers, particularly women workers, are trappedin poverty and are vulnerable <strong>to</strong> shocks. When in addition the statecuts back social spending, the accumulated hidden costs (ill health,lack of training opportunities, short working life spans, and so on)become overwhelming. The result: greater inequality.A study of women fac<strong>to</strong>ry workers in Lesotho, for example, foundthat long and inflexible work hours, between ten and 12 hours a dayduring the week and up <strong>to</strong> ten hours a day at weekends, constituted amajor obstacle <strong>to</strong> mothers caring for their children. 116 During periodswhen hours were even longer, women reported never seeing theirchildren awake. They were allowed no time off <strong>to</strong> care for, or get medicalcare for their children, and their wages were docked when they did.Some women therefore avoided both pre-natal and post-natal clinics,putting their own health at risk as well as that of their children.For any single country, the flexible labour policies encouragedby international financial institutions may seem necessary <strong>to</strong> staycompetitive with other cheap and ‘flexible’countries. But the advice <strong>to</strong>‘flexibilise’ has been given simultaneously <strong>to</strong> many developing156

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