PERC Women’s Committee meeting in Brussels, 13 February 2014

Following the decision take at the PERC International Women’s’ School in Sofia last year, the PERC Women’s Committee met in Brussels to discuss the work program and action plan for this year. Considering that this year the ITUC congress will take place, the committee dedicated part of the meeting for discussing the main themes of the congress and the committee contribution to the discussion in different panels.

The program of the PERC Women’s Committee for this year will follow the main strategy lines decided at the PERC Women’s Conference in Budapest and mainly: building workers power, organizing young women in trade unions; promoting women in decision making positions, addressing gender roles: fighting against violence against women, promoting women’s involvement in the labour market; supporting work life balance, social protection, child and elderly care; tackling gender pay gap. Women’s committee and national women’s structures will get actively involved the ongoing campaigns: DFL, Domestic workers, decent work and life for women and decided to join the ITUC Count Us In campaign. Work will be done in the direction of promoting the ILO Convention 183 in the countries that have not yet ratified it and will lobby for an ILO Convention on violence against women. The committee discussed also the themes for the next PERC Women’s School, collaboration with the youth structures on national and regional level, education and training requirements.

This time the committee meeting took place in a union headquarters following the invitation from the Belgium CGSLB. This offered the opportunity to see how the Belgian union is functioning, to visit the offices, to talk to trade unions officers and get acquainted with the Belgium system of payment of unemployment benefits and the strategy for motivation of trade union membership.