International Women’s Day 2012 – Good Food, Good Life for Women at Nestlé?

On International Women’s Day, women workers at Nestlé are fighting discrimination and unequal treatment. For example,

• sisters are fighting Nestlé’s attempts to prevent them from taking up leadership roles in their trade unions through promises of training courses to improve skills – in cooking and homemaking;

• sisters are taking up legal battles against double discrimination – as women and as trade unionists at Nestlé.

Good Food, Good Life? Close the Pay Gap at Nestlé!

Nestlé pays lip service to equality of treatment, pay equity and what the company calls “gender balance”. What has this meant for women workers at Nestlé? While efforts are being made to recruit women into management positions to ensure “gender balance”, many Nestlé employees continue to work in environments which are far from balanced. Women workers at Nestlé continue to face obstacles to promotion and better pay and will more often than not be found in the lower levels of pay grades. Nestlé blames “external forces” for this while denying its own crucial role as the world’s biggest food company in ensuring the full realization of equal opportunity, equality of treatment and pay equity for all its workers.

Good Food, Good Life? No Rights, No Work in Indonesia and Pakistan!

Women are providing vital support to the fight for justice at Nestlé in Pakistan and in Indonesia.

Good Food? No Food! Wives of the fired Nestlé workers (left) demonstrating in Lampung, Indonesia. Their families have been without income for 5 months.

NFFBTW Women’s Committee (below) demonstrating in Multan, Pakistan. Its chairperson, Mehek Butt (second from right) puts it like this: “We support the Nespressure campaign because we, being workers and women workers, rally together to show that not only as workers, but as family members, we support our brothers and sisters everywhere. We are all IUF family and we should support each other.”

Nestlé workers and their unions – send a message to Nestlé on March 8 calling for

The active promotion of equality at all Nestlé workplaces, including

• Equal rights and access to employment, training and professional advancement

• Equal pay for work of equal value

• Balanced representation of women and men in the workplace

• The right to combine work and family responsibilities

• Joint union-management equality platforms at Nestlé workplaces

Good Food, Good Life for Nestlé workers and their families in Indonesia and Pakistan:

• through the immediate and unconditional reinstatement of all fired SBNIP members and negotiations for the long-delayed collective bargaining agreement;

• by dropping all charges against the Kabirwala contract workers and negotiations with the union on the employment status of these workers.

Please deliver this message to your local management.