TUSALATIN

TUSALATIN created a web portal and surveys to collect wage data from workers and trade unions across four Latin American countries.

Title

WageIndicator web portal and surveys serving workers and trade unions in Chile, Colombia, Guatemala and Paraguay

Acronym

TUSALATIN

Duration

January 2008 - December 2010

Funded by

CNV, Dutch Christian Confederation of Trade Unions

Status

Closed

Partners

WageIndicator Foundation, CENE, CILAS, DIEESE

Project management

Paulien Osse, Victor Beker

Project structure

First co-operation is sought and structured with trade unions affiliated with CAT, CGT, CGTG and CNT in Chile, Colombia, Guatemala and Paraguay through contacts of the project partners CENE (Argentina), DIEESE (Brazil) and CILAS (Mexico). Part of this structure is an advisory board with representatives of the participating trade unions as well as representatives of the partners.

Second the WageIndicator web portal is created and launched, with work-related information, in part similar across countries and in part in country sections on the web portal. It will feature the web survey for Chile, Colombia, Guatemala and Paraguay, posted at the country sections. Also paper-based (offline) questionnaires are created and deployed in Paraguay and Guatemala, given the low Internet access rates in these countries; these paper version are essentially similar to the online survey for reasons of future comparability of the data. TUSALATIN aims to collect in 3 years time in Chile 15,000, in Colombia 12,000, in Guatemala 2,000, and in Paraguay 3,000 completed questionnaires. Mission accomplished.

Thirdly the project aims to establish co-operation with major online and offline media partners in Chile, Colombia, Guatemala and Paraguay to solicit increasing web traffic to the web portal salarios.org and its web survey in order to collect sufficient data.

Simultaneously trade union officials and lay officers in Chile, Colombia, Guatemala and Paraguay are trained in how to apply modules from DIEESE (Sao Paulo) on the use of information on salarios.org for trade union purposes; moreover these trade union officials and lay officers in Chile, Colombia, Guatemala and Paraguay are provided with accurate industry-based wage information as it becomes available through the salary checks (calculated by CENE); also they will get tailor-made reports on specific situations in branches of industry, using the data collected in the survey; research on the data will address topics related to the informal labor market and gender issues.

Websites