The World Federation of Trade Unions salutes the working women worldwide and reaffirms its commitment in the struggle for the real equality against exploitation and capitalist barbarity. A struggle which unites working men and women under the banners of the class-oriented trade unions.
We pick up the struggle from the seamstresses and weavers of New York in 1857 demanding fewer working hours, equal pay for equal work, safer and better working conditions, complete liberation from the chains of exploitation.
We pick up the struggle from the labor leader Clara Zetkin and the militant women in the Copenhagen Conference in 1910 who dedicated this day to all working women in honor of the US women workers struggles.
We pick up the struggles of all working women in the 70 years of the militant and internationalist struggle of the World Federation of Trade Unions who with their strength and determination contributed for the betterment of the working women and men worldwide.
The struggle of the workers movement and the women workers movement has brought important results and gained significant rights through the decades.
We continue today 158 years after 1857 while the same rights are under attack.
We continue today because one and a half century later, the working hours are increasing contrary to the rate of scientific and technological progress. We continue today because workers and working women’s salaries are decreasing contrary to the tremendous wealth being produced by us. We continue today because still in the 21st century the right to employment, education, healthcare, social security, maternity protection, proper social services, freedom of association, collective bargaining and to real equality are yet not fulfilled.
We continue because the right to peaceful, prosperous and secure life for our families and our children is continuously under threat by imperialist mechanisms and monopolies.
We continue side by side, working women and working men, in the same struggle for all we deserve.
We fight for the lives we deserve not the lives the IMF, the World Bank, the imperialists, the monopolies and the employers want to form for us.
We fight on the side of women and men farmers and self-employed to build the social alliance against exploitation and capitalist barbarity.
