Building inclusive workplaces for all.... Ratoath woman behind major international EU trade union movement conference

A Ratoath woman and international trade union leader is among the organisers of a major international trade union conference which will take place in Belfast later this month.

Carol Scheffer is global president of the Womens Committee of Union Network International (UNI).

Over 600 trade union leaders from 50 European countries will gather in Belfast for UNI Europa’s sixth Conference from 24th to 27th March 2025 to shape a shared strategy for the European trade union movement in the service sector. The conference, hosted at the International Convention Centre, will be the biggest European union event in Northern Ireland’s history.

Carol has been busy preparing for this event and particularly the UNI Europa Women’s Conference on Monday 24th. Its theme ‘Collective Women Voices, Common Future’ will focus on collective bargaining and the necessity of including women and a gender perspective when bargaining for workers’ rights to build a common future for all.

“As a long-term Irish trade unionist, I am delighted to host women union leaders from across Europe to the island of Ireland so we can strategise and discuss how we can advance the rights of women workers through collective bargaining as well as ensuring we create inclusive workplaces for all,” she said.

Carol is world president of UNI's women committee. UNI represents 20 million service workers in 150 countries, while UNI Europa represents seven million workers from 50 countries.

She is a full-time national officials with the Communications Workers Union and for the last 20 years she was the European President of the women's committee and is now the global women's president.

Originally from the Listowel, she has been living in Ratoath for 22 years. "I fell like a Ratoath native now, my sons grew up here and went to school here," she says.

"I have been a full time official with CWU for 23 years. My main role in CWU is diversity and equality training. Our union represents workers in the communications such as postal workers and call centres."

Carol studied in the University of Limerick and afterwards moved to Philadelphia where she worked in call centres and then worked for An Post and the banking sector.

She was always interested in women's issues and she applied to the CWU to do research work and ended up working there on a full-time basis.

The focus of the Belfast conference will be collective bargaining.

"From the Irish context the lack of collective bargaining is a huge issue, it's something that we want to pursue and there is there is also concern about the claw back on diversity in workplaces and particularly in the tech industry. There are huge levels of redundancy in the tech industry and the way they are treating their workers is appalling.

"There are concerns in the US in particular at quotas and there's the fear of its spilling into Irish trade unionism. We have equality legislation here in Ireland and we have to make sure these positive measures are abided by.

The rise of racism and the amount of globally and the misinformation people swallow up has had an impact on women's working right and autonomy"

Carol, who is a member of Meath Trades Council has been involved in campaigns around mental health, neurodiversity, women's health, sexual harassment and violence in the workplace as part of her role in CWU.

"Any campaigns that I am involved in at UNI level, I bring back to a national level."

Carol explains that UNI does a lot of mentoring in countries like Sri Lanka, Thailand and African countries.

"In my travels I get to see the perspective of other women's workers which can be quite an eye opener."

Carol loves living in Ratoath where she raised her two sons, Ivan and Robert. Robert is 22 and studying in Trinity and Ivan in doing his Leaving Certificate.

She is married to Christian, a German man who came with his family to Ireland when he was seven years old.

While she feels like a Ratoath native now, she still follow the Kerry football team and as her father was a Limerick man, she follows then in hurling.

Carol is very busy a the moment, preparing for the Belfast conference. "The conference takes place as Britain moves to introduce new labour legislation to strengthen collective bargaining.

Our government has failed to properly implement the EU’s Minimum Wage Directive, which aims to improve workers’ rights and collective bargaining coverage. Union leaders from across the Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and Great Britain will address these issues at the event," she says.

"Our mission is to build power for working people through strong unions, organising, effective collective bargaining and pro-worker legislative frameworks."