In a new case study of the CDT-Zniber bargaining process and outcomes, the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) found that through the contract, women made key workplace gains in reducing gender discrimination, improving wages and working conditions and facilitating broader social dialogue among workers and their unions, employers and the government through the bargaining process. The report also found that if labor laws were consistently followed across the supply chain, informal economy workers would receive an additional 3 percent of wages and benefits.
Employer, government supports the contract
In Meknes, a fertile area 90 miles east of the Moroccan capital of Rabat, workers at Zniber, the seventh largest private company in Morocco, cultivate, process and pack apples, peaches, pears and grapes. They produce 30 million bottles of wine and 500 tons of extra virgin olive oil per year.
Prior to the agreement, one woman working at Domaine Zniber is quoted in the ICRW report The Benefits of Collective Bargaining for Women: A Case Study of Morocco: “We didn’t have any uniform, whether it was raining or snowing. We didn’t have the right shoes, sometimes it was so cold that our shoe soles would stick to the ground.”
The contract is the first-ever in Morocco’s agriculture sector, where women comprise nearly half of the country’s four million agricultural workers, and both management and the government are eager for more such agreements.
“One collective agreement is not enough,” says Abdelkarim Nakkash, the regional director of Employment and Occupational Integration in Meknes. “We need to disseminate this agreement to different establishments and cover the economic fabric as a whole and not only the agricultural sector.
A Zniber manager, Aziz El Yaakoubi, says: “I would like to tell those willing to engage in this agreement to not be afraid to do so, as it is based on a win-win logic. Employers will profit in terms of operations and workers will gain better wages and additional premiums.”
Nurturing women leaders, achieving gender equality at work
The pact follows a multi-year education and training effort by the CDT, with support from the Solidarity Center, to help workers in orchards, olive groves and vineyards improve their working conditions.
The agreement’s success stems in large part from the gender equality trainings by CDT and Solidarity Center. Launched in 2007, the training enabled women to understand their rights and to take steps to improve their difficult conditions, says Touriya Lahrech, coordinator of the CDT’s Women Department and a member of its executive board.
The women help determine the issues important to them and also design their trainings, which are conducted through role play because many are illiterate. “The fact that they participate in the design of the role play which builds on their own experiences” is especially meaningful and effective, says Lahrech. Engendering conversation and listening instills participants with the value they deserve, she says.