[page 17]
speech is re-printed as an important part of their programme.
Comrades, I am an officer in the Domestic Workers' Union and 1 am very pleased to be invited to speak to you today about the struggles which we have carried out inside the Union.
Domestic workers in Portugal total over 100,000-that is 3% of the total workforce. Before 25 April, 1974, cleaning workers and all workers employed in the households of the rich were one of the most exploited sections of the working class in Portugal.
As with the agricultural workers, the law denied us any rights, and we couldn't organise in a trade union, In these conditions within a social and economic structure dominated by a petit-bourgeois mentality, and in the absence of organised collective services such as laundries, or social services, such as nurseries or infant schools, the ruling class kept exploiting us to keep their families and households, Our wages were the lowest because we could not organise, or formulate "demands. Illiteracy, lack of political consciousness, ignorance and a vast labour force that was forced to emigrate from the countrside with the mechanisation of agriculture ensured the continuation of these conditions.
Only after 1973 were we covered by the Health Service or protected against accidents at work. These conditions led to the growth of employment agencies who further exploited our labour, going even to the point of openly promoting prostitution.
The only organisation at a national level was the Catholic Society for the Protection of Servants, whose aim was to defend the existing practice and disguise the Icass conflict with moral and religious preaching.
SOFIA GANHAO addressed a Conference organised by the Solidarity Campaign with Portuguese Workers held in London on March I3. Her below because we feel that it takes up the particular problems and tasks posed for the working class in Portugal today concerning the struggle against women's oppression. This fight has only begun to be waged in Portugal, despite the revolutionary upsurge which began there in April 1974. As members of the Fourth International, the sister organisation to the IMG in Portugal -the LCI (Internatleft which has addressed itself to this question. In the forthcoming elSoon after the collapse of fascism, in May 1974, two congresses, first in Oporto, and after in Lisbon, were called by the existing movement to create the Trade Union of domestic employees, Delegations were sent from all over Portugal and a project for a Colle ective Labour Contract was, for the first time, drafted, incorporating our demands. At the same time, workers started organising at a branch level, not only to strengthen the new trade union, but also to carry in practice a programme of collectivisation of cleaning and domestic services.
We have started a Labour exchange in opposition to the employment agencies and in Oporto we founded a cooperative of domestic services. Our demands and our struggle which has always been suppressed by the bourgcoisie has now been made public by our actions and by debates we have forced the media and newspapers to broadcast.
But working against our class interest, the Catholic Service for the Protection of the Domestic Servant which I referred to before, working on exactly the same principles as they always did, constitutes itself into the so-called Free Trade Union of Domestic Servants' and asks for legalisation by the state.
As the trade union law outlaws the existance of duplicate trade unions, the process of legalisation was blocked until the Sixth Provisional Government came to power. With the growing strength of the right-wing in this Government, the old Catholic organisation was promoted to a 'provisional legal status' until the statutes are certified by a special court. At present we have appealed in the Courts against the decision of the Labour Ministry. fight for organisation and better conditions.
We have opened in Lisbon a home for unemployed domestic workers, which has organised a People's Canteen', where meals are served at very low prices. This canteen is used by the working class, not only for meals, but also for meetings, cultural assemblies, ete. This way, domestic workers who have been left without a roof over theirs heads when their employers fled the country, after April 25, are now organised in a cooperative which is in direct contact with the agricultural cooperatives-for the supplies. And at the same time, it provides a much needed collective service to the working people in Lisbon. This type of contact generates a greater consciousness, not only of the problem of women in Portugal, but also of the experiences and struggles of other workers.
At the moment we are in the forefront of the struggle for women's rights in Portugal. By collectivising the domestic services with the creation of cooperatives we are making it possible. for working class women to have time to defend their interests at the point of production, by active participation in trade unions and in the organs of popular power, the workers committees, the neighbourhood committees, and so on. We are also opening a creche, and this way we hope to transform the nature of our work, by providing much needed services to the working people which up to now have been denied.
We are still fighting not only the legal battle for recognition of our trade union, but also for the right to the same health services as other workers, for legal protection and assistance to the unmarried mother. Recently we won the right to 90 days paid maternity leave. Wo consider particularly important the struggle for legal recognition of the unmarried mother where the worst injustices have been committed.
Four months ago, a domestic workers was condemned to 14 years in prison for killing her child at birth. We decided to fight the case of our comrade and have appealed against the Court decision. We demand that she be -re-tried taking into account the injustices of law and that the judge be a woman. We are also fighting for free abortion on demand because this was an unwanted child.
All our struggle is based in the fight for the rights of the domestic worker, but as such, it is also a struggle for the liberation of the woman, and it is only when organised and united with other sections of workers that we can achieve positive results. Only the workers can liberate themselves.
----- pull-quotes -----
ional Communist League) - is one of the few organisations of the far ections, the LCI has placed the struggle for women's abortion rights