Platzforma.md was established as a progressive media outlet in November 2013. Until 2018 it worked with authors on pro bono basis. The Association Center for Policies, Research and Initiatives “Platforma” was established in 2018 in order to help platzforma.md to gather resources and to grow the ecosystem.
The main areas of activity of the Association are:
– publication and dissemination of texts and commentaries from a leftist (socialist, anarchist, feminist and ecologist) perspectives.
– labor rights and labor organizing. Within this direction the association provides legal and informational assistance to workers. They write extensively about labor rights and labor rights abuses in Moldova. They provide legal counseling for workers fighting for better conditions, for decent wages, against injustices and abuses.
– whistleblowing on labor rights by maintaining an anonymous whistleblowing website (www.ida.md) where workers can submit information about various abuses of their labor rights. Further, the legal team is working individually with each case and provides qualified legal assistance to the workers.
– info and advocacy campaigns for a Living Wage, decent labor conditions, labor empowerment etc.
Since February 2022, after the large scale invasion of Ukraine, and as is customary with grassroots collectives, the team has also been involved in humanitarian projects:
a) assisting refugees with basic needs: shelter, accommodation
b) legal protection of refugees
c) legal counselling and protection of labor rights of refugees
d) social inclusion via Romanian-language classes and short-term professional classes
The Guerrilla Grant
The main objective of this grant is to offer legal protection and informational support to a group of about 50 women-workers from Floreana Fashion, a former textile factory in Cupcini (Edineț District, Moldova) that have not been paid between December 2022 – March 2023 and now are struggling with their former employer to get the salaries and the benefits that were not paid to them. Several women went to court in 2023 and were granted a positive ruling by the first instance. Other women could not go to court because of lack of funding to pay for a lawyer.
The women that went to court still did not get their money because the company says it does not have money to pay salaries. Some of the assets of the company were frozen – cars, machinery – and have to be sold in order to get money to pay the salaries.
The Platzforma strategy, besides addressing the company in court (since it is the direct responsible for the situation), is to also engage the foreign brands for which this company was producing – Alison Hayes, for example. The brands are also responsible for situations like this that happen in their supply chain.
Within the framework of this grant they plan to do the following activities:
– legal assistance for the workers Floreana Fashion: the project team will contact a lawyer/team of lawyers to support, inform and assist at least 5 workers in the courts during 2024.
– result-oriented research of the case: the project team will map all the brands that were producing at Floreana during the months in which the company was not paying the workers.
– media support of the case – the project team will elaborate 5 media products (articles, interviews, investigations) in Romanian and English about the case. The goal for these products is to reach to a local audience of at least 20 000 and an international audience of at least 30 000.
– an advocacy campaign (at least 1 open letter and at least 10 official public appeals) aimed at the foreign brands that were producing at Floreana with the aim to reach them and engage them into a process of paying the workers for the work that they have done and have not been paid.
These activities will help directly assist the workers to get their salaries from the company, and also engage the foreign brands in this process. Through this, they want to send the message that foreign brands are also responsible for the situation within their supply chains. This could make brands, be more responsible when dealing with local companies and to make sure that their workers are being paid regularly. At the same time, via the media campaign the idea is to reach other workers in a similar situations and provide them with a success story that might inspire them and lead them to act for the protection of their labor rights. Overall, these activities will contribute to the empowerment of workers in Moldova but also in making companies, both local and international, more responsible in dealing with their workers.
