Article 24.

• Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

   We have chosen this article because for us it is very important to have at our disposal enough leisure since rest is essential to enjoy a healthy life. Furthermore, adequate rest time increases the productivity and the performance of workers, so a system that exploits the working class results, in the end, less profitable than one that respects legality and the Human Rights.

The situation is especially serious in Asian countries, in which children are exploited to be used as cheap work force. There also are occidental workplaces with foreign employees that earn ridiculous salaries and have marathon-like timetables; and others where, for many people, promoting is only available with an increase in the amount of hours working.

We consider really pitiful that the life of many people is limited to their job, which is not usually to their liking and they have been forced to dedicate themselves to it.

We could relate the content of this article with last year’s polemic proposal of the European Union that intended to increase the maximum of work hours a week to 65. This initiative has not been put into practice because of lack of agreement between the Parliament and the national governments, despite having long discussions and negotiations. There, the Parliament stuck to its demand of suppressing all the exceptions to the 48 hours a week, while the governments insisted in keeping the “opt-out”.

The majority of the Spanish parliamentarians, both socialists and left-wing deputies and members of the European People Party, voted against the labour enlargement in the meeting of last December. According to the socialist spokeswoman Maru Menéndez, this initiative, far from being a social improvement (since it’s contrary to the security and health at work), means a step back in the labour relations and it is also detrimental for the conciliation of work and family life. Moreover, current 48 hours have even been diminished to 35 hours in some countries. On the other hand, the proposal intended that the maximum of work hours would be determined in an individual negotiation between the worker and the boss, which would be against one of the main labour rights: collective negotiation.

This is why we wanted to illustrate the non-fulfilment of the 24^th article of the Declaration of Human Rights with this story and this picture.

   Written by Inés and Alejandro Temiño

   Spanish Delegation

   STORY on HUMAN RIGHTS

I want to tell you a story. The story of my life. It’s not original, because many people hide behind their ayes a similar one. It isn’t either exciting, and nobody will, after reading these lines, want to live something like this. But my life is one of those nobody talks about. And, even worse, it’s one of those nobody wants to hear about and many others try to silence.

To tell the truth, I’m not the main character of this story. Besides, you won’t know who I am until the end.

But let’s put an end to the introduction and talk about that that really matters. So let’s start from the beginning.

***

I was born in a little village of Vietnam. Somehow, that fact would determine what was to come after. I remember the mess, the dirt, and those extremely sad faces. Fortunately for me, I seemed to be just a spectator in that scene, and those faces are nothing but a number, because I was never one of them. Anyway, it was crashing to see them work so many hours and hear them grieve asking for some bread that was almost never given. But something inside me told me I didn’t have the right to feel disgraced. Anyway, that wasn’t the path I had to take; it wasn’t my place, and soon I had to leave.

From the beginning, there was a child that called my attention more than the others. Although at firs sight they all looked the same- little and aching hands, filthy faces with lines from tears that reflected the truth and long, sweaty t-shirts- there was something about the boy that surprised and captivated me. I think it was his eyes. The hope in his eyes.

For some time, I also had hope. In that place where two hundred kids worked day and night without rest, a little boy aged eight or less was able to send me hope. Until the day when, not being able to have his eyes open any longer, they closed and he just faded away. From then on, the word was nothing but a whisper in my memory.

***

I remember the day I left that place with a mixture of feelings. On one hand, I was going to leave horror behind. On the other hand, I couldn’t help but ask myself why I could go when they had to stay. I felt guilty, because everything had been much easier for me than it had been for them. And I was afraid, really afraid, of what would happen in the following days.

My trip was not pleasant at all. I remember the train was shacking all the time and the place in which they made me enter was small and dark. Then we finally arrived.

From then on, I was made to work a lot. Everyday I had to transport a lot of weight for many kilometres. It was really tiring, and I wasn’t used to it.

The new place was so different from what I had seen before. Or maybe not that much. There was also filth everywhere, and sad faces. But it was much bigger.

I guess the main difference was that people walked free. People were able to walk everywhere whenever they wanted to, At the same time, it seemed to me that they where exactly the same as Vietnamese kids: slaves. They were always in a hurry, and earned money that they didn’t have time to spend. And when they earned that money, they where wasting time that they could have spent learning they didn’t need money to be happy. Streets were full of psychologists many people asked for help everyday; usually, problems were related to stress or sadness.

I could see they had everything they needed; they could even have, if they wanted, the most precious thing of all: Freedom. But they let it go away. And even worse, they put it far away from them. Because they didn’t have chains, but they weren’t free anyway. And they weren’t slaves, but they lived as if in jail. They were buying things all day, probably thinking that made them freer. But it was completely the other way round. And for all this they were, if not guilty, at least accomplices to all I had seen.

Time went by and I grew old. I felt exhausted, not only because of all the work, but also because of all I saw everyday. I could remember that black Vietnamese ayes, and that made me feel sad. Finally one day, when much less time than I thought had passed, my final hour arrived.

It won’t take me long to tell you about my end, because there’s not much to say, really.

They simply threw me.

That’s my story, the story of a Nike trainer.

 Written by Marta Lizcano

Attachments:

File	Description	File size	Last Modified
A nike trainer	A carefully drawn Nike trainer.	1411 Kb	09/11/09 20:57
Just do it! - picture	A wonderful picture designed by a member of the Spanish delegation for this article.	3802 Kb	09/11/09 20:56