“IFWEA is necessary to do our work the best way we can.”
Interview with Sahra Ryklief, IFWEA Regional Coordinator, Africa

What do we need IFWEA for?

We need IFWEA firstly, to make contact with similar organisations involved in workers’ education on both regional and international level. To learn from what they are doing and share what we are doing. Thus, the need for exchange forms a large
part of our interest and contribution to IFWEA. Through IFWEA, we develop awareness, co-operation and support for our work. We can tap the resources of workers’ education and research institutions all over the world. IFWEA is necessary in order for us to do our work in the best way that we can.

Secondly, the IFWEA membership facilitates building of closer working relationships between its affiliates, on a national, regional and international level. We can build partnerships with those organisations that share common views and activities.

Thirdly, IFWEA allows us the opportunity to participate and contribute in international debates within the labour movement to advance working class interests. It assists and stimulates us in developing regional and international awareness of our work and allows us to overcome the “localised” restraint.

How do you see IFWEA as part of the international labour movement?

On an international level, the balance of power between trade unions and employers has shifted against labour in the last two decades of the 20th century. Despite the few exceptions to this rule, the general international trend has been that trade unions have lost membership, and their economic, social and political power has waned significantly.

The ideology and policies of neoliberalism have facilitated a growing onslaught against the working population in all countries. There has been a steady shrinkage and restructuring of the formal sector of the economy, leading to rising unemployment levels; precarious forms of work; the growth of the informal sector; reductions of the social wage; increasing economic pressure on real wages; attacks on labour rights protecting jobs, freedom of association and conditions of employment; and last but by no means least, attacks on socio-economic rights protecting the poor, sick and unemployed. These developments are intensified in African nations, affecting the health and welfare of their populations on a generalised level.

The international trends of casual and contract work and the growing numbers engaged in subsistence livelihood strategies (the
informal economy) have resulted in new forms of organisation amongst the working populations of these countries. Women, specifically, as the most marginalised sector of the working population, are at the forefront of these new forms of work and
organisations.

There has also been a noticeable movement towards popular, defensive organisational response on issues focusing primarily on the impact and consequences of globalisation. NGOs have been central in the international and local organising and formation of these responses. Trade union input and/or links to the new popular organisations are still very weak.

As workers’ educational organisations, IFWEA affiliates are predominantly located in the nexus between trade unions, NGOs and these new forms of organisations in the informal economy. They are thus perfectly situated to build a bridge between the traditional and the new forms of organisations. The role of IFWEA is to develop the theories and practices of workers’ education and to open up the dialogue to meet the new reality and changes in the labour movement.

The purpose of IFWEA organisations in Africa is to contribute to the development and provision of educational strategies and resources for policy formulation, activities and organisational growth to trade unions towards their traditional constituency. They can and should also contribute towards dialogue between trade unions and these new forms of workers organisations.

Some IFWEA affiliates are trade unions others are labour support groups or workers’ educational associations. To what extent is this diversity a problem?

The fact that IFWEA affiliates have diverse identities and constituencies is a strength not a weakness. Although there is relative uniformity to the problems and difficulties workers are facing under neoliberalism, there is no single constituency or sector of the labour movement, which can go it alone. We need to challenge the “pigeon-holing” of attitudes and activities of the past, and IFWEA, by its very makeup, does this.

Are you optimistic about IFWEA’s future despite its challenges?

Yes, very. This is not to say that IFWEA does not have its problems, the most critical of which is financial. There are other problems as well, which we need to keep in our sights. For example, we have not yet been able to develop a sufficiently
broad range of activities to keep all our affiliates active in the federation. And this is a problem because what then is the benefit
they incur by being members?

However, the most positive aspect of IFWEA is that its core of affiliates, who are active, is large enough and this has been
enough to keep the number of new affiliates on an upward curve for several years. Also, there is so much dynamism and initiative
in the regional networks of IFWEA, and we have only begun to tap their potential.

Lastly, there is the potential unleashed by the partnership forged with SOLIDAR through the Global Network. This has allowed us to have some regional activity, at least, despite the lack of resources. We need to take this partnership forward, and draw more of the affiliates into the regional activities of the Global Network as a matter of priority.

email to IFWEA Journal: Aslak.Leesland@aof.no