ILO Denounces Race, Gender, Age, HIV/AIDS Discrimination
GENEVA — Every minute, around the world, there are incidents of flagrant discrimination in the workplace against women, persons with HIV/AIDS, members of ethnic groups, the elderly and others, says the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in a report released in May.
In Singapore, for example, the Cricket Club once prohibited a British resident from bringing her family's domestic employee to dine at the establishment. Reports of the case in the local media triggered a public debate in that city-state about the right of domestic workers to enter private sporting or social clubs.
The tendency of local employers, in choosing a domestic employee, is to opt for Indonesian women because they will work for lower wages and "complain less" then Filipina women, Eddy Chua, owner of a Singapore hiring agency, says in an interview cited in the ILO study.
Creuza Maria Oliveira, president of the Brazilian National Federation of Domestic Workers, was taken at age nine from the countryside to the capital of the north-eastern state of Bahia by a family that promised to enrol her in school in exchange for being a "playmate" for the family's young boy.
But Oliveira ended up cooking and cleaning house, and it was not until age 16, thanks to a government literacy programme, that she finally attended school.
These cases illustrate the fact that women are the group most discriminated against in the labour sphere, as the ILO says in its first-ever state of world labour discrimination report — "Time for Equality at Work" — released here on May 12.
Labour discrimination occurs when a person receives less favourable treatment due to his or her race, colour, sex, religion, political opinions, national or social origins, without taking into account merit and skill, says ILO expert Manuela Tomei, editor of the report.
These practices are reported in rich and poor countries alike. In Europe, for example, the vast majority of part-time workers are women — and part-time means not only less income but also fewer or no employee benefits.
In the presentation of the ILO study, Tomei avoided providing an estimate of the number of people who suffer job discrimination worldwide, but the organisation's director-general, Juan Somavia, said it is a "daily reality" for hundreds of millions of people.
Somavia noted that due to race or religion, and not to skills; to age, and not to ability; to colour, and not to competence, the doors to progress and well-being are closed to these people.
Tomei said there is increasing concern about new and less visible forms of labour discrimination, particularly against handicapped individuals, the elderly, and persons with HIV (human immunodeficiency virus, the precursor to AIDS).
In Mexico, the Agustin Pro Juirez Human Rights Centre reported that it had advised victims in 33 cases of individuals or groups who suffered job discrimination because they are HIV-positive.
The women known as "AIDS widows", who lost their husbands to the disease and have generally become heads of household, are "under suspicion" by employers because they are seen as an infection risk, attorney Beatriz Pacheco, of the women's network Positive Citizens, told IPS.
This suspicion implies the "cruelty" of depriving the women of an income when they need it most, said Pacheco, who discovered five years ago that she was infected with HIV.
The ILO warns that failure to confront discrimination and the "widening socio-economic inequalities" in the world's labour markets would have "disastrous effects on national social cohesion, political stability, and hence growth."
"This may be the most challenging task of contemporary society, and it is essential for social peace and democracy," says the Geneva-based organisation.—Gustavo Capdevila
