News

5 December 2009, Saturday 2.00 pm – 3.30 pm

Theme : Stepping-Up on Decent Work and Equality!



Women are very much of the permanent workforce and there was a need to address the issue of integrating women into the trade unions especially the decision making bodies. The panellists were from the UNI Apro Women Committee members and are active in their unions as women officers or principle office bearers.



Yoko Ogawa, Director for Women in UNI Apro started the session by reminding the delegates that the UNI Apro Regional Conference held in Kuala Lumpur 2008, renewed the organisation’s commitment to fully integrate women into trade union at all levels of the trade unions at the same time the Conference highlighted the need to protect workers rights for work life balance and strive for decent working conditions. In this session, the panellists will draw upon the experiences of their organizations in their endeavour to achieve the ideal policies and strategy.

Therese Bryant, Vice President UNI Women Committee took the stage and shared her “19 steps Action Plans for Unions” that elaborated some practical actions that could assist the unions to involve women in the trade union movement. She also emphasised that it is critical that the leadership of the union has to decide that equality is a priority. Noted was also that the commerce sector has a large numbers of women thus it is very important for the strength of the union movement to recruit women as members, increase their participation and develop them as delegates and union officials. If the unions do this, they will be rewarded by a stronger more dynamic trade union!

Ikuko Ishiguro, JSD Japan spells out some preconditions that need to get the issue of gender equality to be taken seriously including the need to make the philosophy of gender equality practised on a daily basis in all areas of union activities. This includes the need to change the mentality of the union officers, human development focusing on women and activities to increase women officers. In JSD priorities for the period 2009-2010 were two main targets namely attainment of work life balance and realisation of gender equality in the trade union movement including the commitment to promote at least 30% women union officers by 2020. When asked from the floor about what would really make a difference to spur the issue of equality in Japan, her reply was that the attitude of the leaders towards gender equality must change.

Joseph Chua, SMMWU Singapore shared with the delegates the many activities held to get women back into the workforce as Singapore is facing shortage of workers. However gender balance in the union has not been achieved as in their union’s EXCO there were only 4 women leaders and 17 men leaders although the membership of women in the union were about 47%. In quoting Halimah Yacob, Deputy Sec-Gen, SNTUC, “We need more women unionists to ensure that female workers have a stronger voice at the workplace, as the existing numbers are too small and not commensurate with the size of our female union membership.”

It was also highlighted during the Q&A session that UNI Global Union will in Nagasaki 2010 pass a resolution whereby in all levels of UNI Global Union, there will be at least 40% women representation in all its committees. It is hoped that the affiliates will also take more serious steps in their own union to increase their women’s representation.



It was important to note that work life balance and decent working conditions can only be achieved for men and women if the issue of equality is addressed. It was also clear from the panel discussions that the leaders of the union plays a crucial role in developing equal opportunity and anti-discriminatory agendas both within the trade union movement and employment policies in their collective bargaining. The biggest hurdle is still the need to change the negative attitudes towards this issue.



The UNI Apro Commerce Conference brought together 68 UNI Apro Commerce delegates from 12 affiliates representing 8 countries in Kuala Lumpur from 5-6 December 2009 to determine the aims and focus of its work for another term and renew the commitment to bring decent work to all commerce workers and influence friendlier worker labour policies to benefit all workers in this region.