PWWSD acknowledges the Resilience of the Palestinian Workers

The Palestinian Working Woman Society for Development acknowledges the resilience and the resistance of the Palestinian workers on their day, the 1^st of May. The Palestinian workers celebrate this day to symbolize the ongoing struggle against oppression and exploitation. On this occasion, we stop to take a look at the victories of the Palestinian proletariat, and those who sacrificed their lives for freedom, independence and ending the Israeli occupation.

What signify Labor's Day this year are the continuous popular revolutions in the Arab World, which resulted from the entrenched poverty, the search for dignity, the absence of freedoms, which made the Tunisian martyr Mohamed Bouzizi, burn himself to death. This act ignited a new era of revolutions which toppled two presidents in Tunisia and Egypt, and continues to flame in different parts of the Arab World.

On the Palestinian level, the fruits of the Arab revolutions appeared with signing an agreement between Fateh and Hamas in the auspice of the new Egyptian government. The agreement arrived at the demands of the Palestinian people, who have suffered, and are still suffering from the internal political division. We at the Palestinian Working Woman Society for Development, aspire for a concrete translation of the agreement on ground, in order to end the political and geographical division of the Palestinian people, of the unions and the working segment in general. Workers make the biggest and widest segment of the Palestinian society, the poorest, especially women, who suffer from doubled oppression. Palestinian working women face great violations of their labor and human rights, starting from the discrimination in wages, the number of work hours, the work environment, the deprivation of the maternity leave, and the right of feeding their babies during the work hours.

Because of the 1^st of May, the organization welcomes the establishment of  the labor courts, and emphasizes the need to set national missions for the coming period, which requires joining the efforts of the laborers movements, and analyzing the conditions of the Palestinian workers, as well as the labor organizations in order to activate their roles and enhance a more democratic work environment.

The Palestinian Working Woman Society for Development called for the activation of the Palestinian law of Labor, in a manner which protects working women's rights, especially in relation to the number of work hours. It also continues to fight to form a committee that would be responsible for setting a minimum rate for wages as soon as possible, so that this day becomes a date of resistance, for the marginalized,  the poor and the ostracized communities, to fulfill their rights, and end their misery. This will fulfill their human demands, and secures them a decent life, and a social protection for them, their families and the rest of the society.