ve workers' rights. The campaign has not only pulled out more than 10.000 children out from work and brought them within the educational fold but has also been instrumental in creating mass awareness and safeguarding workers' rights.
While the Union takes the lead role in running the Child Labour schools, organizing and campaigning for the workers and children, BWI facilitates the financial, logistical and technical support. Eventually, BWI support has been institutionalized through the CHILD LEARN project. Child Learn is a non-profit organization that manages the property and assets of the child labour schools. Since the local unions and BWI are represented in its board, CHILD LEARN continues to address the trade union agenda.
At present there are a total of 17 BWI/Union run Child Labour Schools and Preparatory centres for erstwhile child labourers all over India. Implementing states currently include Bihar, Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.
The project does not view child labour in isolation rather it views the problem of child labour from a socio-economic perspective. Besides schooling, unions also bargain for better wages and conditions of work thereby preventing children to contribute their labour for a minimum level of earning. Social Dialogue/ Industry level dialogues are key components of the union(s) campaigning strategy. In this direction, a national level agreement was signed between the BWI affiliated unions and the All India Bricks & Tiles Manufacturers Federation (that represents 35,000 brick kilns and about 7 million workers) in 2008 and similarly in the Punjab State – the union has negotiated a Collective Bargaining Agreement in 2009 on wages at 16.5% with the employers over and above the government rates and covers all the union organising districts. The CBA covers about 100,000 workers in four union organising districts.
To make the schooling interventions sustainable, the project aims at co-management of schools with the government, community & the unions.
We continue to invite affiliates to campaign for the ratification of ILO Conventions 138 and 182. We also support the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC).