In Brief: Challenges in Transport

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Global campaign takes off
Tackling Truckers problems
Aviation workers still at risk
Disease still peaking after 25 years

GLOBAL CAMPAIGN TAKES OFF

The ITF has launched a major new long-term campaign, urging its affiliated unions to get involved in HIV/AIDS programmes and activities – to prevent future infections and provide care and support to infected members and their families.

In order for this to happen, the campaign envisages unions bringing HIV/AIDS into their core programmes and activities, and encourages them to bargain to establish HIV as a workplace issue.

The initiative, launched on World Aids Day, 1 December 2006, promotes HIV prevention through education, film and radio, and supports and campaigns for counselling and testing facilities, for anti-retroviral drugs and against prejudice.

ITF General Secretary David Cockroft commented: “For several years the ITF has been at the forefront of AIDS work involving transport workers. We are now working closely with the World AIDS Campaign and with our sister global union federations. With them we have a particular focus on pushing the message
of ‘Universal access to HIV services in the workplace by 2010’.”

Dr Asif Altaf, ITF Global HIV/Aids Project Coordina-tor, said: “For years AIDS was seen as a medical problem, but now it is recognised just how deeply it is influenced by social, economic and political factors. With the organisational strength of over 600 affiliated unions in 142 countries, we believe we can make a real difference in taking the messages of prevention, treatment and support into the workplaces where it has not always been heard.”

Mobility and long absences from home make transport workers particularly vulnerable to HIV, whether they work on land, sea or air routes. By getting involved in HIV work on behalf of their members, unions gain a powerful organising tool, attracting non-union and particularly young workers with the message that the union is taking responsibility on this issue and can offer tangible support to members.

The ITF’s global project will include exchanges of information between trade unions, a special day of action to coincide with World AIDS Day each year and a series of seminars and workshops to help unions develop their bargaining strategies and other HIV programme work.

For more details of the ITF’s HIV/AIDS campaign see www.itfglobal.org/campaigns

TACKLING TRUCKERS PROBLEMS

A group of trade unions has signed a memorandum of understanding to work together in tackling the problems – including high levels of HIV infection – experienced by truck drivers in the 6,700 km Northern Transit Corridor that links Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Trade unions in the region have found that high unemployment, lack of awareness of core standards, traffic laws and regulations, and poor organisation are making truckers victims of rampant abuses of labour rights. The five signatories to the MOU have pledged to work together in ensuring that their members’ terms and conditions of service are improved upon and that the members’ human and workers’ rights are respected.

They have undertaken to assist each other’s members in cases of accidents, harassment by police and customs officials and other appropriate challenges. They will carry out joint activities in combating corruption, non-observance of driving hours, HIV/AIDS and drug/ substance abuse.

Romano Ojiambo-Ochieng, former ITF Africa HIV/ AIDS coordinator, who attended the signing event last June said: “This is a step forward in the struggle to combat the HIV/AIDS scourge through improving the terms and conditions of work and tackling other issues that are known to increase transport workers’ vulnerability to HIV/AIDS along the transport corridor.

“It is clear that these leaders recognise the problems faced by their members and are determined and committed to do something about it.”

AVIATION WORKERS STILL AT RISK

A recently published report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) warns that while airlines have often led the way in policies relating to HIV as a workplace issue, airline workers are still a high risk group.

The report, HIV/AIDS and work in a globalizing world 2005, links continuing concerns for aviation workers with ever increasing mobility of travellers, tourists and business people, as well as with the disruption to normal relationships caused by the job.

“Air-travel personnel are at risk of HIV/AIDS in the same ways as other transport workers,” it says. “Even with short absences from home, frequently relationship problems due to mobility can lead to casual sexual encounters.”

The report charts the history of the epidemic as it has affected aviation workers. In the early days of the epidemic, aviation was disproportionately affected. Many airlines responded promptly with positive workplace policies, but the epidemic has continued to evolve, and problems continue.

Flight crew living with HIV/AIDS may face difficulties concerning their use of medications and medical regimens, the report says, while requirements for pre-employment HIV screening for pilots and co-pilots can still be a problem.

At the same time, mandatory vaccination for travel in certain countries can put extra strain on crew members’ immune systems, which can cause difficulties for a person living with HIV/AIDS. Increasing pressure on immune systems is also experienced due to regular time zone crossing, as well as shift work in most areas of aviation, on board planes as well as on the ground and in air traffic control towers.

More generally, the intrinsic links between poverty, HIV/AIDS, movement for work, and globalisation are clearly highlighted in the report, which provides estimates of populations at risk of HIV/AIDS in 34 countries.

Download the report (pdf)

DISEASE STILL PEAKING AFTER 25 YEARS

A report by UNAIDS last year to coincide with the landmark of 25 years since the first recorded cases of HIV suggested that the epidemic may be reaching new peaks. At the time of the report, around 65 million people had been infected with HIV, and more than 25 million people had been killed by AIDS since it was first recognised in 1981. A further three million died of the disease in 2006 alone.

The vast majority of the 38.6 million people living with HIV in 2005 were unaware of their status, according to the report. It provides some important information on the role of transport and vulnerability of transport workers, and confirms that HIV spreads fastest in provinces linked by major transport routes.

More positively the report shows that education and awareness raising initiatives can get results. For example in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, “…research carried out after an HIV prevention programme for truck drivers found the percentage of drivers reporting that they had had commercial sex, declined from 14 per cent in 1996 to 2 per cent in 2003. Moreover, the percentage of drivers whose last instance of commercial sex was unprotected fell from 45 per cent to 9 per cent in the same period.”

A full copy of the report can be downloaded at http://data.unaids.org/pub

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