Jyoti Macwan of SEWA elected as one of the Vice Presidents of ITUC

“The Second World Congress of the International Trade Union Confederation, held in Vancouver, Canada from June 21-25, 2010, concluded by electing Sharan Burrow as its General Secretary and Jyoti Macwan, General Secretary of the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) of India, was elected as one of the Vice Presidents of ITUC. Both election results are historic. ITUC is the world’s largest international trade union organisation, founded in Vienna in 2006 out of the merger of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and the World Confederation of Labour (WCL). Sharan Burrow is the first female General Secretary of ITUC (and its predecessors). SEWA is the first trade union of informal workers to become a member and now an elected leader of ITUC (and its predecessors). SEWA has 1.3 million members in India: all working poor women engaged in home-based production, street trade, day labour in agriculture or construction, or small-scale farming, livestock rearing, fisheries, minor forest product collection-processing, and artisan production.

SEWA was represented at the ITUC Congress by Jyoti Macwan, General Secretary, and Manali Shah, head of the SEWA Urban Union. When asked what SEWA is, Jyoti Macwan replies “I am SEWA”. By this she means that SEWA is its members and its leaders. By this she also means that she is a “daughter of SEWA”. Her mother, a tobacco picker, was an early grassroots leader of SEWA. As a young child, when her mother went to work, Jyoti went to SEWA day care centers. After she herself became a grassroots leader of SEWA, Jyoti rose through the ranks to become the first General Secretary of SEWA who is the daughter of a SEWA grassroots leader. Manali Shah, a lawyer by training, has been organizing women informal workers in Ahmedabad City, India for SEWA for 20 years and has been the head of SEWA’s Urban Union for 15 years.

WIEGO extends its hearty congratulations to Jyoti Macwan and to SEWA for Jyoti’s election as one of the Vice Presidents of ITUC .”