What
is Vida Viva about?
Vida Viva is about (re-)gaining control of working conditions
at the shop floor
In the last decades most unions internationally have come into defence:
workers rights have been harassed and undermined, working conditions
have been deteriorated. VidaViva is about developing internationally
new workers strategies to change this situation and actively fight
for change.
VidaViva is about broadening worker and union understandings
of health.
Not health as the mere opposite of sickness, but health as a pre-condition
for a fulfilling and complete life. The conditions we have to work
under limit our possibilities of having such a life. For instance
when you work and live with permanent pain or stress it affects
your life, your relationships, and your capacity to relate to the
world. But unhealthy and hazardous working conditions are not just
limiting possibilities of workers in their (and your) time off;
it also has consequences for work satisfaction, for the co-workers
and for the prospects to find another job or simply being able to
bring in money.
Thus Vida Viva aims to develop and implement strategies that
engage workers and their unions in ways that deliver improvements
in working conditions on their terms.
Vida Viva has created and applied several active learning methods
to raise consciousness of health issues as intimately related, in
a triangular pattern, to work on the one hand and life outside work
on the other. At the same time Vida Viva promotes initiatives by
unions, led as much as possible by rank-and-file members, to pressure
for improvements in working conditions.
Trough these activities Vida Viva wants to strengthen unions
by making them more responsive to rank-and-file members.
Vida Viva tries to create spaces and ideas that enable workers to
revalidate and assert their own knowledge -- of their health, working
conditions and life worlds -- and their standing within trade unions.
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