CLOTIL WALCOTT

 

WALCOTT THE WARRIOR

Two Decades of Fighting for Domestic Workers' Rights

 

By Wesley Gibbings

Express

May 15, 2000

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Much like her career, it's a long, narrow, winding road to the decades-old building where you can find the home and office of women's activist and trade unionist Clotil Walcott.

 

Outside the curtained doorway to her office, a grandchild has supper and watches Pokemon on cable television.

 

When Walcott eventually emerges, she is characteristically immaculate - short, graying hair in place, her deep, dark eyes shadowed, on this occasion, by the wrinkles of a smile.

 

It's Arima.  The old East Trinidad town where the Caribs put a proper licking on Spanish settlers centuries ago.  It's now a troublesome political constituency for parties vying for office.

 

Like the town in which she grew up, Walcott does not deliver respect very easily.  She has been courted by almost every party that has sought office in the borough - but to no avail.

 

Politicians both from here and other areas know her sharp tongue and shrill voice and few venture to cross swords with her on the many occasions she has put her foot down.  When that happens, it's easy to forget that before you is a 73 year old great-grandmother who barely crosses four feet in height.

 

Today, she is smiling.  But, 17 years after establishing the National Union of Domestic Employees (NUDE), she believes that while workers organisations have gained some ground, those representing the lowest-paid and most exploited are yet to receive the kind of recognition they deserve because politicians have not kept their word.

 

For her pains, Walcott was honoured by the government in 1998 in recognition of her "outstanding contribution to the development of women."  She is not entirely impressed.

 

"What they don't realise," she says, "is that I am not so much interested in the awards, just help me to get a fairer deal for our domestic workers who are suffering."

 

The diminutive activist, together with her daughter, Ida Le Blanc, comprise the secretariat of the 200-member organisation housed in the working class suburb.

 

Long, long ago, Walcott was a married woman with five young children.  "But you know how men are," she says.  "He went his way and I went mine…with my children."

 

Back in 1982, while still a production line worker at a local poultry processing plant, Walcott set up an organisation that has had its fair share of battles with the mainstream trade unions, the government and sections of the women's movement.

 

When veteran trade unionist, James Lynch, who had been the chief administrator of NUDE since its inception died in 1988, Walcott decided to leave her job and to pursue her union activities on a full-time basis.

 

Since then, she has single-handedly waged several memorable battles including a running tangle with the ministry of Labour to have the industrial relations complaints of house-keepers heard in the country's Industrial Court and not in the civil court.  A symbol, she says, of recognition of those women as workers.

 

"We are not criminals to be in regular court," she says, "domestic workers are workers like everybody else and they should be protected just like everybody else."

 

In a few months time, Walcott will have her wish come true.  Amended minimum wages' legislation now ensures that domestic workers will have their say in the court set up to hear industrial relations complaints.

 

"The previous situation has resulted in unfair treatment and injustices," she says.  "Together with that, our recognition as a trade union had been denied."

 

In fact, the umbrella National Trade Union Centre (NATUC) has, so far, not processed an application for membership made by NUDE some years ago.

 

"They want us to answer all kinds of questions," Walcott complains.  "Well, I don't have time for that.  We have work to do."

 

"Her struggle against the old boys network inside the trade union movement is well documented," coordinator of the Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action (CAFRA), Cathy Shepherd once said.

 

Walcott insists that this "network" might well be an obstacle to the achievement of proper recognition for as many as 30,000 housekeepers, low-wage office staff and other domestic workers.

 

Senator Diana Mahabir-Wyatt, who piloted ground-breaking legislation on the recognition of unremunerated labour in 1994, agrees that the number is high and growing.

 

"People are reacting and demanding services from people - there will also be a need for domestic workers and, in fact, this need if going to grow," Mahabir-Wyatt says.

 

She praises Walcott's work over the years in bringing national attention to the plight of such workers.

 

"Household workers," Walcott says, "do too much work for too little money.  They are the hidden face of the economy."

 

It is a message she has taken to several regional and international for a including the 195 Beijing Women's Conference where she became a founding member of the International Network of Domestic Workers.

 

In 1990, she was the only Trinidad and Tobago representative at the Extended Session of the Commission on the Status of Women in Vienna which, among other things, heard her argue in support of national accounting for the work of unremunerated work in agriculture, food production, reproduction and household activities.

 

Walcott is cautious about being too closely aligned to much of the work of the local women's movement which, she says, is often guilty of not keeping its ears close enough to the ground.

 

"They are going about this thing the wrong way," she says.  "How can they hold all these big meetings and discuss things that affect women and not consult with them before?"

 

"They should be up and down this country talking to women and finding out what they really feel," she complains.  "If you stay here log enough you will see the number of women who come and talk to me on a daily basis."

 

This popularity has, however, never lured the great-grandmother of four into active politics.  "That is not my thing," she says, "leave me let me do my union work - that is what I love."

 

"I think I got this will to fight from my mother," she says.  Her mother, Manuelita, was herself a paid housekeeper "for some white people."

 

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