The ILO’s Ship to Shore Rights South-East Asia Programme supported the strengthening of negotiation skills and capacity of trade union in the fishing sector. From 21-22 March, the programme organized a two-day training workshop on collective bargaining agreement (CBA) for key members of Trade Union Federation of Food, Beverage, Tourism, Restaurant, Hotel and Tobacco (FSB KAMIPARHO) in Bitung City, North Sulawesi. As a coastal area, Bitung city is known for its seafood processing industry.

“Different from other CBA training, this training focuses on gender issues as an attempt to make sure the well-representation of women in the CBA’s negotiation team. Through a gender-sensitive CBA, we would like to make sure the respect of women labour rights such as rights to maternity protection, protection from the threats of sexual harassment and gender equality as women are the majority workers in the seafood processing industry,” stated Supardi, Chairperson of KAMIPARHO.

Tedy Harmoko, representative of the Indonesian Pole and Line and Handline Fisheries Association (AP2HI) who was also one of the resource persons in the training, greatly welcomed the gender-sensitive negotiation training programme. “It is also our interest to make sure that workers in our factories, including female workers, will be all well protected. No place for sexual harassments and discriminations. We strive for a good, safe workplace, including our buyers,” said Tedy.

Albert Bonasahat, ILO’s National Programme Coordinator for Ship to Shore Programme, facilitated an interactive game called “weighing statements with gender lenses”. During this session, he urged the participants to start a process of looking at gender roles with new eyes. The game provided a better and stronger understanding that men and women should be treated equally in terms of employment opportunities, employment compensations and other employment rights.

He also facilitated a discussion among the participants on the technicality of the CBA negotiation that highlights the perspective of gender equality as the platform of the negotiation work. “Women’s issues are union issues considering most of the members of KAMIPARHO in Bitung City are women. By having more representatives of women in the union negotiation team will place women’s issues as priority issues and, in turn, will better protect the rights of female workers and ensure gender equality,” explained Albert.

A joint statement for better protection of female workers

Prior to the training, to show their true commitment, KAMIPARHO and AP2HI initiatively developed a joint statement to the Mayor of Bitung. The joint statement requested the Mayor of Bitung to issue a decree for a better protection of female workers to prevent any kinds of gender-based discriminations as well as gender-based violence and harassment at work. The joint statement was submitted directly to Mayor Maurits Mantiri on 24 March.

“We submit the joint statement directly to the Mayor in person. We voice our inspiration that we hope the City of Bitung can issue a decree to ensure the protection of women’s rights to workplaces that are free from discrimination as well as harassment and violence. Women workers play an important role to and significantly contribute to the seafood processing industry,” Supardi concluded.

Bitung City is one of the Indonesia’s tuna fishing industry hubs. The city has 22 large- and medium-sized seafood processing companies in operation. The processing industry produces frozen products, fresh tuna, wood fish and canned fish.

The Ship to Shore Rights South-East Asia (SEA) is a multi-country, multi-annual initiative of the European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN), implemented by the ILO in collaboration with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and aimed to promote regular and safe labour migration and decent work for all migrant workers in the fishing and seafood processing sectors in South-East Asia.