Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI), an alliance of companies, trade unions and voluntary organisations, who have collaborated their efforts to improve the lives of workers across the globe, has been continually engaging with textiles and garment workers in India.
It recently organised a review day of an ETI workers’ rights project in India, where women engaged in Tamil Nadu’s spinning mills shared their experiences and views.
These women workers had the courage to share their experience as a peer educator during the Tamil Nadu Multi Stakeholder (TNMS) project in front of an audience of over a hundred. At the conference, they raised issues about working hours, the need for proper salary slips, right to choose to join a trade union and be represented in collective bargaining.
Such meetings offer a common platform to workers, trade unionists, NGOs, mill employers and international brands to review project progress and share lessons learned from this and other initiatives.
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According to the ETI’s website, the TNMS project initially provided a platform to address women’s basic health, hygiene and nutritional needs. At the review day, women workers reported that they now took better care of themselves; better understood the importance of a good diet, as well as they were better equipped to overcome their physical hindrances at workplace.
ETI believes that creating awareness and enabling a dialogue between workers and their employers can and does lead to change, even if this starts with the basic health and hygiene. “We will now build on this promising start with a second phase, which more directly addresses broader rights at work and having learned many lessons can offer a more streamlined programme for the new mills that will enter the programme this year,” an ETI statement read.
