ICEM Women's Committee Sets Health and Safety Priorities

The Brussels-based International Chemical, Energy, Mining and General Workers' Unions (ICEM) Women's Committee 24 August narrowed its focus to health and safety issues and better communication through the Internet. Reviewing an 11-point Programme adopted this past April in Bucharest, Romania, the Women's Committee agenda also included a commitment to achieve equal pay/equal treatment language in ICEM Global Agreements with multinational firms.

The ICEM's statutory committee opened week-long meetings here yesterday of the Third ICEM World Congress in Stavanger, Norway.

The committee established a 7-member working group to prepare health/safety and other specific proposals for the next Women's meeting at the June 2004 ICEM Executive Committee gathering. The working group: Lillian Knudsen, KAD, Denmark; Binda Pandey, NICIWU, Nepal; Jeannette vanDongen, FNV Bondgenoten, The Netherlands; Tania Bowers, NUM, South Africa; Lindiwe Ngobese, Chemical Workers' Union, South Africa; Val Burn, T&G, United Kingdom; and Women's Committee Chair Genia Essenina, Inter-Regional Chemical Trade Union Sodrujestvo, Russia.

Essenina and former Women's Committee Chair Margaret Prosser also explained impending Congress issues to the 70 delegates, and encouraged women to network with each other and to speak out on all matters before Congress, which opens Thursday, 28 August.

ICEM General Secretary Fred Higgs addressed the basic theme of Congress (Globalisation: Local Problems, International Solutions by Solidarity) and said the Women's Committee on the global level will only be as strong as it is in developing vibrant strategies and committees regionally and on the national level.

The Women's Committee closed with a touching presentation to Prosser who, until April's Bucharest meetings, had chaired the group since it's founding in 1992. She was given a sculptured set of marble hands in the form of a door-knocker as a symbolic reminder that the hands of ICEM's women will ever be present with her as she enters retirement after a dedicated career as a trade union leader.