Separately, the indonesian Children's Welfare Foundation (YKAI), in co-operation with the Ministries of Manpower and Transmigration, and the state Ministry for Women's Empowerment, launched a national campaign aimed at raising public awareness of the rights of the country's 1.3 million housemaids, of whom over 300,000 are between the ages of 10 and 18. Part of the campaign is to call for households employing housemaids to provide better conditions and allow them one day's rest each week. 17 In Australia approximately 4,000 home care workers in New South Wales refused to wear uniforms made in sweatshops. In a campaign co-ordinated by the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia, the home care workers gained support for an international anti-sweatshop campaign with an agreement that all their uniforms would now carry the Fair Wear label. Meanwhile, Social Accountability International (SAI) published the first revised version of the SA 8000 standard which included the addition of home workers to the standard.

Also in January, a report by Human Rights Watch claimed that domestic women workers in Guatemala face persistent sex discrimination and abuse. Domestic workers, many of whom come from that country's historically oppressed indigenous communities, do not have the legal right to be paid the minimum wage, nor do national labour laws provide adequate protection for domestic workers who are under the age of 18. The report by Human Rights Watch also identified serious discrimination in the growing number of maquilas of Guatemala's textile industry—another female-dominated industry sector. In the maquilas, in order to get a job in a factory, women must often reveal whether they are pregnant, either through questions on job applications, in interviews or through physical examinations. The US-based clothing manufacturers and retailers that have contracts with discriminatory maquilas include Target, The Limited, Wal-Mart, GEAR for Sports, Liz Claiborne and Lee Jeans. All of these have codes of conduct or terms of engagement that prohibit discrimination.

In another action the International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers' Federation (ITGLWF) wrote a letter to World Trade Organisation (WTO) general secretary Mike Moore aimed at getting protection for workers in an ongoing labour conflict at two Korean garment plants in Guatemala, regarding the attempts to organise workplace unions under the umbrella of the union federation FESTRA. ITGLWF general secretary Neil Kearney said the violations of the right to organise demonstrate a clear need for 'a social dimension to trade' and the need to hold the government of Guatemala to account.

Kearney has also sought to affect the conditions for factory workers in Sri Lanka's free-trade zones. Again, it is foreign-owned factories that have come under fire as the ITGLWF cites anti-union practices, such as employing baton-wielding security guards to intimidate union members, telling new workers not to join the union, firing or transferring workers who protest unfair conditions, claiming that unions are 'illegal' in the free-trade zones, threatening to hand union activists over to the police for their legitimate activities, and refusing to attend meetings called by the labour force. Kearney wrote to President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaranatunga and to Minister of Labour Mahinda Samaraweera suggesting that if action was not taken the international union would sub-mit a complaint to the International Labour Organisation. The ITGLWF also wrote to two Korean-owned companies, Dulon Zippers and Cosmos Macky, urging them to ensure the disputes are resolved. 18

The same month, the international Confederation of Free Trade Unions 19 produced a report condemning the 'miserable' situation faced by working people in Malawi, and challenged the government to meet its obligations to protect its citizens. The report states that 'more than twenty per cent of the workforce on commercial plantations, especially tobacco plantations, are children. Much child labour on these commercial plantations is hidden because the tenant farming system encourages the whole family to work.' Although the tobacco industry is the central element of Malawi's trade strategy, the report claimed 'its workers face severe poverty and poor working conditions'.

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