From 14 to 17 September 2023 took place in Linz / Austria a seminar about “Young workers engaging for solidarity – Why? How? Who?”, organized by JOC Europe (Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne - Europe), in cooperation with EZA and funded by the European Union.
The seminar took place in the context of a bigger project with the final goal of publishing about the “Why, How and Who” of young workers engaging for solidarity in their organizations. Before the seminar, there were group meetings in the different countries and qualitative interviews conducted with young people in the different countries. After the seminar there will be one more meeting to finalize a publication.
25 young representatives of workers’ organizations of Austria, Belgium, Germany and Spain participated in the seminar.
What was the most important aspect of the seminar?
The seminar aimed to bring together experiences from young workers and information about how and why they and other young workers are organizing in their movements and what motivates them to fight for changes in society. This was reached by giving the different delegations time to share about their projects and motivations and reflecting together about the motivations and goals of organizing.
Why was the seminar important just now?
Different aspects of our current societies compete with being organized for social causes, there are many options to spend free time and to avoid focusing on the problems we face. Being part of an organization and dedicating time to being involved seems less attractive for many (young) people than doing more individually focused activities.
This tendency has been triggered and strengthened by the economic and educational systems, among others, which have as their very core the individual achievements and performance rather than collective and coordinated actions like the ones social organizations prioritize. Collective bargaining is one example of this shift in societies. Collective workers' representation gets more and more difficult as the most difficult working conditions happen in fields where people are forced into individual work relationships. Besides fighting this tendency and looking for alternative ways for our societies, it is important for workers’ and social organizations to know how they can still involve new people into their organizations in these times and what motivates (young) people to be organized.
Which topic fields were discussed?
Every national organization as a group prepared one part of the seminar with a topic their members are involved in. Every organization presented about their work and how and who is organized. They also used the seminar to include opinions from people from other countries into their processes. The following topics were discussed during the seminar:
Colonial heritage and racism in our societies as part of the reality of young workers with a migration background. How young, racialized workers can be involved in dominantly white organizations.
The difficulties of young unemployed to participate in society and being heard. How young unemployed can be empowered by our organizations to participate and express their needs.
The role of European societies towards the rights of workers in other parts of the world. How a European due diligence and supply chain legislation can play a role in global social justice.
Difficulties in accessing care for mental health as a young worker.
Seminar results
Three main results have been achieved during the seminar:
On the individual level, participants could share about their own motivations and the actions they do and get feedback on them. This way they got more motivation and inspired the others.
On the level of the national organizations, they got impulses on new topics and options to reach and groups of young workers' that other organizations work with. They therefore are able to start projects with vulnerable groups they did not reach until now and have the contact of other organizations that already do so.
On the European level, the seminar has contributed to the process of analyzing the “who, how and why” young people are organized in workers' organizations. This will be used in the final publication of the project.
The delegations from each organization took the results on their own topics back to their work. They will use the results in a way it suits their action. For the other organizations, it was an impulse on how to reach certain vulnerable groups and how to address certain topics. This impulse might be used in their future work.
The results on the meta level about how, why and who is organized in the participating organizations will be systemized together into a publication that will be spread to the participating workers’ organizations in order to help them reach out to more young people.