For Clotil Walcott

Clotil trained herself to be the best warrior for justice for her class she could be. In earlier days as a chicken factory worker, on top of raising five children, she took correspondence courses in industrial law, and in negotiation and collective bargaining, so she could represent fellow workers more effectively. In 1980 when she met the International Wages for Housework Campaign at a seminar in Europe, she immediately saw what could be organized by drawing out the connection between the housewife who worked for no wages and the domestic employee who worked for low wages. She launched Trinidad’s Wages for Housework Campaign on the spot. Two years later she founded the National Union of Domestic Employees (NUDE) to represent low-waged women (and men) working in shops, groceries and bakeries; and as receptionists, baby-sitters, seamstresses, and fast food workers, as well as slaving in other people’s homes. She understood that they needed an organization to spearhead the struggle, but she also ensured that it should be a trade union which at the same time would be autonomous of other more traditional and conservative trade unions.

Later she wrote a document called: The Global Kitchen, a brilliant title now associated with the Campaign everywhere.

Clotil was wary of existing political organizations which she believed at best ignored the needs and interests of grassroots women. As an article in the Trinidad press in 2000 put it, NUDE “had its fair share of battles with the mainstream trade unions, the government and sections of the women's movement.”

Using the legal system and the press, NUDE fought abuses and violence by employers -- from refusal to pay wages and summary dismissal to rape and sexual assault. She protested the absence of any form of social security provision for housewives in either their paid or unpaid employment. She campaigned for unwaged and low-waged workers to be recognised as workers under Trinidad’s Industrial Relations Act of 1972 in order to gain protection of labour legislation for them.

Clotil Walcott will go down in history as the individual who was central to winning passage of the “Counting Unremunerated Work Act 1996” piloted by Senator Diana Mohabir-Wyatt on September 18, 1996. The Act committed the Government of Trinidad & Tobago to measure and value unwaged work. It was the first such legislation anywhere in the world.

It was the culmination of the work which Clotil had done with Wages for Housework in many countries, from 1980 in Copenhagen to the 1985 UN Nairobi conference where they won the first resolution to measure and value unwaged work. In 1990, she was the only Trinidad & Tobago representative at the Extended Session of the Commission on the Status of Women in Vienna where she argued in support of national accounting for unremunerated work in agriculture, food production, reproduction and household activities.

In 1999, NUDE won the right for domestic workers to bring minimum wage disputes to the Industrial Court, a major victory.

Clotil thought globally and always began with women, though she never stopped there. As part of the International Women Count Network (IWCN) delegation to the 1995 UN Conference in Beijing, she helped found the International Network of Workers in Domestic Service from 10 countries, including in South America and Africa.

Clotil was a leader in our network for as long as her health permitted. In 1997 she was the keynote speaker at the 25^th Anniversary celebration of the Wages for Housework Campaign in London, and from 2000 she was a co-ordinator of the Global Women’s Strike which was launched by Wages for Housework in the same year.

Today at this service to honour her life, we formally propose that the University of the West Indies hold an annual Caribbean-wide conference for grassroots women to organize in Clotil Walcott’s name.

We want Clotil’s family to know that we loved your mother/grandmother/great-grandmother. We loved her for all that she was, but especially for her refusal to submit to those with power, including those who thought they were ‘educated’ and she was not, and patronised her. She was highly knowledgeable and wise about what matters to most people in the world: how to survive, how to struggle and how to win; and she educated many, including those with degrees. We loved her unbreakable loyalty to the grassroots, her organisational imagination, her uncompromising will and her generous heart. We will always miss her and honour her memory.

Signed:

Selma James, International Wages for Housework Campaign and international co-ordination of the Global Women’s Strike
Andaiye, Global Women’s Strike/ Women of Colour in the Global Women’s Strike, Guyana
Sara Callaway, Women of Colour in the Global Women’s Strike, England
Adelinda Diaz Uriarte, Domestic Workers Union and Global Women’s Strike, Peru
Solveig Francis, International Women Count Network, England
Manju Gardia, Global Women’s Strike, India
Eric Gjertsen, Payday men’s network, USA
Phoebe Jones, Global Women’s Strike, USA
Michael Kalmanovitz, Payday men’s network, England
Nina Lopez, Global Women’s Strike, England
Jaqueline Lopez Almazan, Global Women’s Strike, Mexico
Grace Loumo, Global Women’s Strike, Uganda
Margaret Prescod, Women of Colour in the Global Women’s Strike, USA
Juanita Romero, Global Women’s Strike, Venezuela
Maggie Ronayne, Global Women’s Strike, Ireland
Sara Williams, Global Women’s Strike, Spain

Tribute to Clotil Walcott from Red Thread, Guyana: Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Clotil Walcott inspired us even before we met her. It was her work in Trinidad and Tobago campaigning for domestic workers to be recognized as workers that spurred us on to try to organize with domestic workers in Guyana for fairer wages and working conditions. We invited Clotil to come and meet the domestic workers we had started to meet with and she immediately agreed. When she met with the women she told them and us about her experience organizing with domestic workers in Trinidad and Tobago and advised us to organize. Although we failed in that first effort because we did not know how to overcome the fear the women felt about losing their jobs in an economy where jobs for grassroots women were even scarcer than in Trinidad and Tobago, we learned a lot from Clotil that we never forgot. We are using what we learned from her up to now in our campaigning for a living income and affordable access to goods and services for housewives, domestic workers, shop assistants, security guards, bartenders, old age pensioners, women on public assistance – Guyanese women of Indian, African and Amerindian descent who are unwaged and low-waged.

More than anything else, what we have tried to learn from Clotil Walcott is not to be afraid, not to be intimidated by people – women or men – who have more education and power in society than us.

For us, the work that Clotil Walcott did was the most important work any woman could do. Hers was the work that can transform society, that can help us bring about a world where, in the words of the Global Women’s Strike, we “invest in caring, not killing”. This is why a few years ago we nominated her for the CARICOM women’s award and we still believe that it should be awarded to her. As grassroots women, we want this once-in-a-lifetime grassroots woman recognized!

Clotil, we will always remember you as you were when we met you – no-nonsense, brave, vibrant, bright, energetic, determined. We will always remember you with respect. We will always remember you with love.

Signed:

Joycelyn Bacchus, Halima Khan, Joy Marcus, Cora Belle Roberts, Vanessa Ross and Wintress White
For Red Thread and the Red Thread Network

Message from the Committee in Defense of the Rights of the People and the Committee in Defense of the Rights of Women, Oaxaca, Mexico

Each time that a community fighter dies, a star is reactivated in the firmament. From there she will be with us because women who struggle never die, they live in the daily life of the peoples who are looking for ways to liberation. Clotil Walcott, we did not meet you in the flesh, but we know that the footprint you have left on all our sisters means that you were a great woman, an incomparable compañera, a friend and above all a fighter for women’s rights. Wherever you are, here is our firm commitment that we will carry on along the road you walked to build a world of equity.

To the family of Clotil Walcott, we hope you will follow her example because she lives in every voice, every raised fist, every woman who rebels against her oppressors.

To victory always! The present is of struggle, the future is ours!

In sisterhood,

Jaque and Sam

Original Spanish

From Juanita Romero, Global Women's Strike, Venezuela

Our respects to our dear comrade Clotil Walcott and warm greetings of solidarity and unity to her family. Sachi Ananda Vigraja says that: the soul doesn’t age nor dies, it is eternal and full of good fortune, it goes to a better life, a spiritual world where everything is eternal.

From CCTH, Domestic Workers Union, Lima, Peru

Clotil Walcott you have passed to immortality. You are present in all of us who are fighting daily with all our strength for a more just world for all women, because you fought for the international movement which gives power to women who are poor.

CCTH (the domestic workers centre in Lima, Peru) will hold a minute of silence for our great compañera Clotil Walcott. With your example we renew our commitment to change for women. You are ahead of us, we will meet you where you are, dear.

Clotil Walcott present!

Paulina Luza, president of CCTH

Original Spanish

Elsi Bravo de Wiener, who works with the Domestic Workers Centre in Lima, Peru:

My condolences to the family of Mrs Clotil, great woman, mother and fighter! Her example stays with us and unites us in a solidarity world embrace. She will live on among us, in the continuity of the struggle for a better life, with full rights and justice for all, for happiness and love in the world.

Tribute to Clotil Walcott from the Utility Workers Union of America

On behalf of the Utility Workers Union of America I would like to express our sorrow over the passing of Ms Clotil Walcott, President of the National Union of Domestic Employees (NUDE) in Trinidad & Tobago. With her passing, all working families everywhere have lost a great champion for the rights of those of us who have least.

Clotil was one of those rare union leaders who never forgot where she had come from and who it was had put her there, and therefore who it was her honor and her duty to represent. She understood that either the union took active leadership in the community on behalf of all workers, paid and unpaid, or the union would itself become part of the problem for working people.

She also constantly reminded the rest of us that none of us is an island – she was a true internationalist.

She was the leader of a union whose members were overwhelmingly the women who often take care of other people’s kids in order to feed their own. She proved once again that when those who have least get protection, that protection extends all the way up the ladder to other higher paid workers.

Those of us in the union movement in the industrialized world too often neglect and ignore the struggle of workers in the global South, especially if they are women, and most especially if they are low-waged or unwaged. Most of the workers of the world live, work and fight to survive against the same corporations that we face in the US. We are deeply dependent on their struggle, and neglect it at our own peril.

Clotil Walcott, trade unionist, internationalist, struggler, will be sorely missed.

Yours in international solidarity,

Sam Weinstein
Assistant to the National President

In our lifetimes we sometimes have the privilege to live and walk with people of great vision and genius. Sometimes we recognize that greatness, sometimes we don’t and even when we do, it often takes their passing for us to realize the fullness of their contribution. Clotil Walcott was one such person. Even though she was recognized many times over during her lifetime - how much more do we recognize her greatness now that she is no longer here with us. Clotil was an (extra) ordinary, working-class woman who attempted to bring before the public, the hardships and experiences of working women, both in their paid work and in their unwaged work which she knew first hand and engaged in a continuous struggle to improve their working and living conditions. Clotil described herself as a grassroots woman and became in many ways the voice of the voiceless, never waiting for an invitation to attend an event or meeting related to workers’ or women’s rights.

Street, St. Joseph. She lived there with her parents for six years until the family moved to Arima in search of employment. She first attended St. Joseph Roman Catholic School then the Arima Roman Catholic School. In addition to the normal school curriculum as was customary in those days, Clotil and a few of the other students were given extra lessons after school by the nun, in French and Latin. While at school, like most other youngsters she was very interested in sport - her favourites being – cricket, rounders and athletics. At this time too she developed an interest in drawing and painting.

Her first working experience was in a dry goods store, however, unsatisfied with this type of employment, she left and began work at the Central Experimental Station at Centeno. A few years later she was among a group of workers at the Station who were ‘laid off’ on grounds of redundancy. In February 1964, she began employment at the Cannings Poultry Processing Plant in Arima. This was a branch of the larger Cannings Group of Companies[1] which included among its many subsidiaries – a chain of supermarkets, stationery stores, meat wholesalers, a soft drink and ice cream factory and many others. According to Clotil, it was her bitter experiences with both the union and the employer while working with this company for fifteen years which, helped to develop her interest in the oppression and exploitation of working women.

by joining the Union of Commercial and Industrial Workers (U.C.I.W.) This union was eventually replaced as the representative for the Cannings workers and in 1967 she joined the National Union of Government and Federated Workers (N.U.G.F.W.) In her own words …

‘I became particularly concern about the problems of the working women being oppressed and exploited, to do this effectively I discovered I had also to be conversant with the problems of male workers.

In order to increase her knowledge of the subject she took an overseas correspondence course in Industrial Relations, gaining certificates in Trade Union Law, Shop Steward Duties, Industrial Negotiations, Industrial Law and Collective bargaining. On March 13th 1974, she was elected shop-steward by the union members in her department but was never allowed to fully serve these workers. During her tenure in office she became painfully aware of the role of the union at the time which according to her supported the company against the workers. This they did by not standing by the terms of the Industrial Agreement. By September 10th 1974 however, she was in her own words ‘arbitrarily ejected’ from the post. This information was conveyed to her is a letter from the Union executive dated October 3rd 1974.

In 1971, for example, despite the support of the majority of the workers, an announcement was made stating that both the Divisional Manager of the Company and the President General of the Union did not want her to represent the workers. Despite the lack of a formal position, Clotil continued her work of supporting the workers. In the meantime, the company and the Union continued their campaign against her. In the factory, great discrimination and victimization was practiced against her but her understanding of trade union law was a factor contributing to her continuing employment.

Despite all this, Clotil has continued fighting, sending letters to the Union on behalf of workers, writing to the newspapers (which seldom published the letters) and writing to the Minister of Labour. Her activities in formal trade union work then shifted to other unions such as the Bank and Gender Workers Union and the Union of Ship Builders and Ship- Repairers.

From about 1966, Clotil began to participate actively in politics. Initially this comprised mainly activities involved in electoral campaigns in support of people seeking political office. During the period 1969-1972, she became a member of NJAC - The National Joint Action Committee and participated in the Black Power and Black consciousness movement which swept the country. Its aims were – ‘Black identity, Cultural, Social and Economic Improvement’. During the state of Emergency she would take her daughter Ida, then 16 years of old to visit the political detainees, supporting them by providing food, or when necessary a hiding place. This no doubt contributed to Ida’s own continued commitment to the work her mother started. She however bemoaned the fact that –

‘Yet we have not been able to come together, sufficiently to really examine our collective experience as black people in a struggle …”

In 1974, Clotil along with her close friend and comrade Brother James Lynch, Salisha Ali and others established The National Union of Domestic Employees (NUDE) as a section of the Union of Ship Builders, Ship Repairers and Allied Workers Union (USSR). The bulletin announcing its formation stated - “Calling all persons serving in the capacity of cooks,, kitchen helpers, maids, butlers, seamstresses, laundresses, barmen, babysitters, chauffeurs, messengers, yardmen and household assistants” heralding the union’s concern with low income workers more generally in addition to domestic workers - broadly defined.

Democratic Action Congress (D.A.C.) a centre party, because in her own words –

‘I felt it my duty to find a platform through which I could influence a programme and promote the women’s role in our society… I had the opportunity of encouraging one of the leading platform speaker Mrs. Jennifer Johnson of the D.A.C. to give prominence to both the international and local aspect of women Progressive Programme …'

Later she would shift her allegiance as many trade unionists would to the United Labour Front. In addition to this she is also a member of the Trinidad and Tobago Peace Council, a branch of the World Peace Council, under the leadership of Dr. James Millette and sold copies of the newspaper Moko through the streets of Port of Spain often using money from her own pocket to pay for papers that were not sold.

Driven by the failure to get her views aired in the press, Clotil did her own publishing. She taught herself to type with two fingers, and bought a typewriter. Using this she prepared stencils which were printed on Gestetner machines by friends and associates. On completion these pamphlets were sold by Clotil herself at fifty cents each, around the town, at political meetings and at the parliament building. I remember seeing Clotil in parliament with a pile of papers on her arm selling to all who were willing to purchase. This was the start of my admiration for her strength, courage and perseverance, qualities I wished I had more of. Four of these early publications dealt with her struggle at the Cannings Poultry Processing Plant and were entitled:

2. A Woman’s Fight – An example of Exploitation of The Working-Class Woman. Part II.

These four essays were published in a booklet entitled Fight Back Say a Woman, by the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague in the 1980s.

In 1980, Clotil was invited to attend an international conference on Women’s Struggles and Research at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague in The Netherlands. That was an important turning point in her development. It was at this meeting that Clotil met Selma James and Wilmette Brown of the International Wages for Housework Campaign. Immediately the connection between the rights of domestic workers and the struggle for the recognition of women’s unwaged domestic labour became clear and from henceforth a relationship would develop which would continue for close to thirty years. It was clear that both these movements were based on something which was so important, so obvious to us now but yet so under-recognised - the way in which the accepted, unwaged domestic labour of women in the home - housework and child-care was taken for granted, not perceived as important, not valued and therefore paid very little or not at all.

This marked the beginning of a mutually beneficial relationship as well as Clotil’s new career in international mobilization and diplomacy. She would speak at conferences in Vienna, Austria, Turin Italy, Nairobi Kenya, Beijing China, London in The United Kingdom as well as Kingston Jamaica to name a few. NUDE became the local representative of the International Wages for Housework Campaign

In 1982, NUDE registered as a union in its own right under the Trades Unions Ordinance, although to this day household assistants are not recognized as workers. Over its 25 years of existence NUDE would continue the struggle for recognition of household workers as workers as well as a number of other struggles with which they were more successful. Based on the struggles of Clotil, NUDE and later Ida Le Blanc the following developments were achieved:

1. The passing of the Minimum Wages and Terms and Conditions of Service for Household Assistants Order under the Minimum Wages Act Chapter 88:04:18- 17, November 1982; This included - minimum wages, a 44 hour work week; overtime rates for public holidays, maternity leave, vacation leave etc.;

2. The passing of the Unremunerated Work Act, 1995 which allows for the counting of unwaged work in national statistics the result of among other things - numerous letters written by Clotil to the Prime Minister, The Minister of Labour, the Minister with responsibility for Women’s Affairs and every other possible government ministry or department culminating in the successful piloting of a Independent Members Bill in parliament by then Senator Diana Mahabir Wyatt. This made Trinidad and Tobago one of the first countries in the world to pass such legislation and the Trinidad and Tobago language being used as the model for the Beijing Declaration on Women;

But Clotil was also a mother and a single mother of five children - three girls and two boys - Pearl, Ida and Merle and Ben and Andrew. Clotil approached her work of mothering with the same seriousness and commitment as her politics or maybe it was the other way around. For many argue that it is the fire of mother’s love that often inspires many strong and dedicated women activists to their self-sacrificing work. She would defend her children and grand-children to the death as many would soon learn and women’s activist aside, woe betide any woman who mis-treated or took advantage of her beloved son - Ben. In all her doings Clotil kept her children close to her and they loved and admired her. Never did they feel neglected by her as they came to understand and even participate in her struggle. In their childhood they remember picking tonca beans on the Torrecilla Estate and filling crocus bags from as early as 4.00 a.m. After this they would bathe in the river then go off to school that is all of them except Pearl who her mother indulgently would allow to continue bathing in the river.

Although poor and working-class, Clotil struggled with pride to keep her children well fed, disciplined and happy. After Church and/or Sunday School on Sundays she would inspect the one good ‘Sunday best ‘to ensure that it was in good condition to be worn again - she would say “put my dress there” after checking for tears and if soiled. After this they would enjoy her Sunday Red beans and other delights. When she relaxed as she did with family and friends it would be with her daily coffee, salt fish and provision with ‘’ plenty olive oil”, it was said that it was pointless to try to stop Clotil from speaking beyond the allotted time. But Clotil was able to combine her political and trade union work with effective parenting by her location in the nurturing community of Mt. Pleasant Road, Arima. Therefore her home, which she strived always to keep clean and tidy - especially her well organized office at the back - would become an Open House for all who cared to enter; a home where her children and grand-children preferred never to leave, and where she would preside as matriarch over the different generations. Neighbours would observe coming and going over the years - important international visitors, representatives of the ILO such as Constance Thomas, the International Wages Housework campaign like Selma James and other United Nations Bodies, trade union colleagues like Michael Als and Vincent Cabrera, women’s movement activists like - Claris Manswell, Gaietry Pargass, Rowena Kalloo, and international scholars and researchers like Janet Bauer and Marina Karides.

We need to thank the community of Mt. Pleasant Road (Wattley Circular) for providing this nurturing space to Clotil and her family to live, work and grow. We need also to thank Clotil’s family for allowing us to share so much of her time, vision, energy and intellect which allowed her to enrich all of our lives in Trinidad and Tobago, The Caribbean and indeed the world.

What can we say of such a woman? I for one can go on and on but we would never have said enough. How can we honour her memory which has inspired so many of us? How can we keep her name alive for future generations to know and to revere? This is a conversation we still need to have. Clotil has already received many awards in recognition of her contributions. These include

1.     9th June, 1984 - Bank and General Workers Union Grand Certificate of Honour for service and dedication in the trade union movement.
2.     1985 - The Star Citizen Award - Peoples Popular Movement.
3.     1991 - Servant and Hero of Labour Award - Council of Progressive Trade Unions (CPTU).
4.     1991 - Network of NGO’s for the Advancement of Women for Outstanding Contribution to the Women’s Movement.
5.     8th March 1998 - Guardian Women of Trinidad and Tobago Award - for her sterling contributions to the social life of Trinidad and Tobago.
6.     1995 - The Partners of The Americas - In Recognition of your 30 years of dedicated service which achieved recognition of the value of women’s work.
7.     31, August 1998 - The Humming Bird Medal (silver) - for Loyal and Devoted service to the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago in the sphere of Trade Unionism.
8.     24, January 1999, Women of the Year - Women Working for Social Progress,
9.     2000 - The Mayor, members of Council and the Burgesses of Arima award for Community Service in Recognition of her Contribution towards the Development of Arima.
10. 8, March 2003- Network of NGO’s for the Advancement of Women - International Women’s Day 2003 as a Pioneering Women.
11. 8, March 2006 - Ministry of Community Development, Culture and Gender Affairs, in recognition of her contribution to the creation of legislation for the counting of unwaged work.

We can possibly think of many other things that can be done to keep her memory alive but I think that what she would want more than anything else in the world would be the revision of the Industrial Relations Act to recognize household assistants as workers in Trinidad and Tobago - THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES.

[1] This is also part of the larger Neal and Massy Group of Companies.