Oxfam has been working in Chile since the 1950s. After the military coup in 1973, we helped the poorest families to survive and provided legal support for people who had had their civil and political rights violated. During the subsequent dictatorship we helped poor people to find housing and to buy medicines. We also supported women's groups who ran soup kitchens, supplying food and providing leadership training so that the women could become a focus for lobbying and activism in their communities.

With the end of the military dictatorship in 1990, we opened an office in the capital, Santiago, and since then we have supported long-term development work, helping the poorest people to have a say in how the country is run.

To do this, we focus on specific disadvantaged groups, especially women that are working in precarious conditions, for example collecting seaweed in poor fishing communities, doing piece work as home workers or working in the fruit export industry.

National and global trade policies ensure that multinational companies make huge profits while their workers struggle merely to survive. An example of this can be seen in Chile's fruit export industry. The industry is worth millions of dollars and many people in the USA and Great Britain enjoy Chile’s delicious peaches, grapes, apples, and other fruit. But the women who are employed seasonally to work in the fields and packing plants have to suffer low pay, long working hours (during which they stand up all the time and are sometimes exposed to pesticides), and the threat of dismissal if they complain. As their employment is unstable, they usually don’t have access to social security benefits.

Chile’s national labour laws are supposed to protect employees but protection for seasonal workers, especially women, is weak, even though they work in industries that are some of the biggest sources of revenue for Chile. Oxfam has helped to organise and train women workers in labour rights and helped them to lobby for improvements in their workplaces and access to social security. Oxfam is also lobbying multinational companies (many of which are from other countries including the USA, Great Britain, and Japan) to improve conditions for seasonal workers and to act responsibly within the community that they operate.

Last updated: June 04