“The only tool the poor have is to join together”

“The only tool the poor have is to join together and realize that struggles are collective efforts.” Their strength is in numbers,” Mujica said in closing the meeting, which gathered 187 representatives from 55 countries.

 

“In this country, we’re used to hosting congresses for economists, doctors…  ‘important people’ who come to this exotic resort called Punta del Este, but I prefer what we’re seeing here today, workers with weather-beaten faces coming together,” he said.

 

Uruguay “is basically a livestock country where cows made it possible for many people to settle down right off the boat, once the native population had been crushed, and yet it took over 100 years for rural workers in this country to be entitled to the eight-hour workday, and it hasn’t been very long since domestic service workers acquired the same rights as other workers,” he said.

 

The International Network of Domestic Workers, which became a federation in Montevideo, decided to organize its first congress in Uruguay because this was the first country to ratify Convention 189 of the International Labour Organization concerning decent work for domestic workers.

 

The Uruguayan president told congress participants that “when things get too bad” for them, they can emigrate to “this tiny empty country where there’s room for thousands and thousands more” and where they “will be welcome.”

 

The event was co-hosted by the IUF and Uruguay’s sole trade union federation, the PIT-CNT, among other organizations.