Ela Bhatt, founder, recognized as “outstanding leader in the fight for equality and worker rights”

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton joined AFL-CIO President Sweeney, former President of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Inez McCormack, and AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer Bill Lucy, in presenting the prestigious George Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights award to the Self Employed Women’s Association of India (SEWA) and its founder, Ela Bhatt. The George Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award is given each year to a union activist who has shown both extraordinary courage and commitment to human rights for working people.

"Ela Bhatt and the members of SEWA are a living affirmation of the importance of human rights, the power of union organizing and the value of working together to demand fairness and opportunity. Through Ela Bhatt's courage, sacrifice, and dedication to women and all people who are struggling in the absence of opportunity, SEWA has been a force for hope and change and a reminder of the importance of standing up and standing together to build a better world," said Senator Clinton.

SEWA represents a new and dynamic type of unionism. Merging several movements together, SEWA succeeds in unifying the women’s, labor, and cooperative movements. As unions are defining new strategies for organizing workers and responding to changes in the global economy, SEWA has succeeded in making visible the work of millions of the poorest workers. In 2006, SEWA became a member of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, making it the first informal worker organization to join the global labor federation. SEWA exemplifies the innovations made to protect worker and human rights as globalization becomes more powerful and drives more workers into the informal sector.

“SEWA characterizes the type of unionism to take us into the next century. With our Sister Bhatt and other sisters and brothers around the world, we will build alliances to forge a global labor movement that protects worker rights, regardless of their citizenship,” said AFL-CIO President Sweeney.

SEWA is a trade union established in 1972 that represents over 700,000 women working in the informal economy. The women members are self-employed and have jobs as street vendors, artisans, head-loaders, and trash collectors. SEWA is the largest union in the world run by and for women and strives to establish economic autonomy for all women in the informal economy. They demand employment security, access to healthcare and childcare, food and shelter. SEWA’s principles come from the Gandhian ideas of truth, non-violence, self-reliance, and the integration of all faiths and people.

SEWA also provides micro-loans to women working in the informal sector. In combining low-interest loans with their worker advocacy, SEWA not only fights for women workers but also provides opportunities for wages to rise and women to have autonomy in the economy.

Ela Bhatt founded SEWA in 1972 and served as General Secretary from 1972-1996. Today, she continues to serve on the Executive Committee. She was a member of Parliament and served from 1986-1989. Ela helped found the SEWA bank in 1974, providing opportunities for women to establish themselves independently. Additionally, she is a founding member of Women in the Informal Economy Globalizing and Organizing, a global research-policy network that seeks to improve the conditions of working women in the informal economy.

On Tuesday, September 26, the AFL-CIO engaged in a discussion with Ela Bhatt, founder of SEWA, in a series of roundtable discussions on the challenges of the global economy and how the labor movement must develop to combat those changes. Other participants included Working America, the AFL-CIO community affiliate. Additionally, the Committee of Women Seeking Justice for Domestic Workers of Casa Maryland participated, which has adopted strategies to organize around the needs of domestic workers. These new and innovative organizations show how the labor movement can adapt to protect worker rights in the age of globalization.

Past recipients of the Meany-Kirkland human rights award have included such heroic figures as recently brutalized leader of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, Wellington Chibebe, imprisoned Nigerian trade union leader Frank Kokori, Muchtar Pakpahan, Indonesia Labour Welfare Union (SBSI), China’s independent worker-leader Han Dongfang, and, most recently, Mikhail Volynets, President of the Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine.

The Solidarity Center was founded by the AFL-CIO in 1997, and works to assist workers around the world struggling to organize for free and democratic labor unions. It continues to expose injustices done by foreign governments and corporations in the fight to protect worker rights.

Contact:  Alison Omens 202-637-5018